Love Kills
by suerum
Summary: Everyone in Spinelli's world is dying and though Jason is there to comfort him, there is a secret involved. Slash. A very dark, disturbing story.
1. Numbers

Author's Note: I have no rights over the characters of General Hospital

"Love is a hidden fire, A pleasant sore, A delicious poison, A delectable pain, An agreeable torment, A sweet and throbbing wound, A gentle death." **Fernando de Pujas**

Counting

Spinelli wedged himself securely into the farthest corner of the overstuffed couch and reaching over to the coffee table picked up the television remote, clicking on the new flat screen that Jason had installed last week. Spinelli had pleaded for this very concession, this upgrade in technology almost since the first day he had moved into the penthouse. Yet, now it gave him no pleasure, no satisfaction at all. No, it was simply an instrument, a means to an end. Its purpose was singular, to do what Spinelli required of all the audio and visual devices in his world these days-provide him with distraction so that he neither had to think nor sleep.

He couldn't quite remember when his suspicions had begun, a while ago he thought. Initially, he had dismissed them, shrugged his shoulders and assigned them to the category of his brain wherein so many of his thoughts and ideas of late languished. It was a neural no man's land of 'you're overreacting', 'you're imagining it' or, the entirely plausible capper, 'it's the grief speaking…'

There had been plenty of that, more than any one person should have to tolerate through a long and adventuresome existence. Still, here was Damian Spinelli, the perennial wimp, the boy who always wanted something exciting to happen and it never did. Yet, he had now watched more people in his life die in the last several months than he had previously ever even been acquainted with during the entire duration of his first eighteen years of life.

He had long since surpassed Maxie's masochistically held record of death. "What was it?" He thought to himself wearily rubbing his brow, an incipient headache hovering as it frequently did nowadays. "Let's see-it started with BJ, then there were her parents. No, wait," he chided himself, "They still breathe somewhere on this God forsaken planet. The Jackal must be sure to restrict himself to those who have _actually_ met their demise, not merely vanished…" He sat for a moment, lost in a reflective silence that was more a case of being dazed and miserable, exhausted from sleepless nights that were attested to by his sunken and red rimmed eyes, rather than any actual philosophical musings or analysis of categorizing the people that Maxie had lost over the course of her tragically foreshortened life. "So, then," he continued as the TV hummed softly in the background, providing some small comfort to the huddled figure on the couch. "First was BJ-she who gifted her loving, endearing heart to my Maximista. Then there was Jesse-the valiant police officer who lost his life in the performance of his duty." He had to briefly stop before he was composed enough to continue with the next name on his grisly list. "Alas and alack, so tragic was the untimely ending of the life force which radiated most purely from sweet, fair, and faithful Georgie."

Again Spinelli paused in his count, as he considered anew the loss of Georgie Jones, what she had meant to Maxie but also what she was to him and more importantly what she _might_ have meant to him had she but lived. He mused to himself, "Were Georgie to have survived then Maximista and I might never have…" That was something he hated about his beloved science fiction, the idea of changing the linear nature of time, of having alternate lines of existence to contend with, to ponder. It was better to be like Stone Cold and not dwell on such things. To simply play the hand one was dealt and to move forward, never wasting time on regrets or what if scenarios. "So," it was a wistful sigh, his counting was going slowly, something the Spinelli of yore could have done in his sleep was being compromised by the very lack of such a commodity. "Georgie, she belongs in both our columns to be fair-mine and Maximista's. Lastly, there was Cooper Barrett, the clean cut cadet."

What was the final count then? He added them up; it would seem four or perhaps three and half if winsome Georgie were to be split between the Jackal and fair Maximista. Then of course his list started with Georgie, he knew it now but not then. Back when he had discovered Georgie's mute and crumpled body in the park, Spinelli had assumed, as had everyone, that she was a victim of the Text Message killer. They believed it was Diego Alcazar in his mad, driven, twisted plot to avenge his father's murder who had prematurely ended her tender and gracious existence. Now Spinelli thought-no, he absolutely _knew-_differently. Diego hadn't been the responsible party. Instead, it had been someone entirely separate-someone unsought, unthought and unexpected.

"Still, to prove it, that is beyond my skill or even more truthfully my wont." He exhaled, and leaning back against the comforting softness of the couch, closed his eyes for a moment's respite from the mad, buzzing thoughts whizzing endlessly around his distraught brain. He devoutly wished he could magically return to the benign times of his life when ignorance was his protector and being lovelorn and clumsy his most pressing problems.

He didn't know precisely when his suspicions were raised. He was deep in mourning for Maxie, and nothing else mattered. She suffered an unexpected heart attack, dying suddenly one day in Manhattan while attending a fashion gala with Kate Howard. The paramedics arrived speedily, but it was to no avail. His Maximista, the light that shone in his heart and soul, she who was his completion, his raison d'etre was dead.

Jason returned to the penthouse, his tread heavy, his shoulders bowed. Lulu called him, she demanded urgently that Jason get to Spinelli before he heard about it over the internet, that unending cache of knowledge and information into which his cyber companion had a virtual window perpetually propped open. One look at the boy sitting on the couch told him he was too late, that Spinelli already knew. He had been sitting in total darkness, a bottle of vodka perched unopened on the coffee table.

"Spinelli," Jason had no idea what sequence of words could possibly follow his opening gambit. There was no concept of anything he could say or do helping his young roommate get through this, to survive the loss of his heart.

He sat down next to him, close enough so that their thighs were touching. Raising an arm he placed it around the shoulders of the young hacker. "I'm so sorry…" God, he didn't have much use for words at the best of times but on occasions such as this their total inadequacy frustrated him to the point of anger.

Spinelli looked up at his mentor, his role model, his best friend, the man who had so many unarticulated roles in his life and asked the unanswerable, "Why?" His eyes were blurred with unshed tears, his face so pale it seemed he wouldn't bleed if cut.

Jason shrugged uneasily, he couldn't give a satisfactory response, at their deepest level they each knew it but it was also incumbent upon him to try. After all, that was his job, to fix things no matter how irreparable, no matter how immutable. "I guess…it was something to do with her medication…it was the wrong type or dosage or something…" He was uncomfortable talking about it, medicine wasn't his forte.

Spinelli was looking at him in astonishment, disbelief etched his countenance. "Does the Jackal clearly understand what Stone Cold is saying? That this wasn't a result of nature asserting itself, of Maximista's overtaxed heart giving up an unequal struggle but rather caused by error or even malicious intent on the part of human agency?" His voice gradually grew from a whisper to an agitated shout throughout the duration of his speech. Now the tears were falling freely from his eyes and he was trembling in his combined anger and despair.

Jason wanted nothing more than to turn back time, to stop this all before it had begun but he couldn't. All he was capable of doing was being here now for Spinelli and making sure that he caused himself no physical harm in his fomenting grief. He only wished he could also find a way to blunt the emotional trauma, to assuage his angst ridden torment.

"I promise you," he told him with quiet grimness, each word a vow unto itself, "I _will _find whoever is responsible for this and they will pay." It was said with absolute certitude but it fell on deaf ears for Spinelli could not process promises of vengeance when all he wanted was a restoration of love.

Jason watched him pace the length of the living room, walking until he collapsed into a bereft heap on the floor. He carried him upstairs where he stayed with him, keeping vigil through that first endless night and all the ones since.

Spinelli shook himself free from the unhappy reverie, it had been months, six or seven, he couldn't be quite sure, time no longer held much meaning for him. It merged into endless hours and days that were nevermore to be brightened by the cheery, light bearing, life affirming presence of his one true love. His heart had been buried with her. The desiccated organ that was left in his chest only served to circulate blood through his stubborn body which it seemed was selfishly disinclined to forfeit living as an appropriately grand romantic gesture in remembrance of the inestimable Maxie Jones.

"That's not the point of this." He remonstrated with himself as he struggled to shake off the fugue that had descended on him that bleak night and had only lifted in the past several weeks to be replaced by the just as undesirable and much sharper biting companionship of unrelenting fear. "So, Maximista," he said her name as firmly, as naturally as he could but it cost him to do so. "Then…Lulu, oh, poor, sweet, charming Lulu…"

The original blonde one had been of great succor to the Jackal in his time of need. Only she and Jason had been tolerated by Spinelli. They took turns staying with him, each one communicating with the other by unspoken looks and gestures that they thought he hadn't noticed. He felt a bitter humor at the idea that people, even people who professed to love him, could mistake mourning for inattention or even worse, stupidity.

They had been terrified he was suicidal and so, for weeks, for nearly a month, he had not been allowed more than brief moments alone, particularly when he was in the bathroom that innocent seeming locale which was the potential site of so many methods of death. He ought to know he had contemplated each and every one of them. Jason would be in the actual room with him when it was his 'shift', his face unreadable, his arms folded as he leaned against the door with his worried blue eyes darting every which way while he evaluated what was in reach, what Spinelli might access to cause himself harm.

Lulu, in her turn, would stand outside the door, feigning impatience, knocking every few moments saying, "Spinelli, hurry up," or "Are you finished yet," not stopping until she would receive an affirmation of his status of still being amongst the living.

After several weeks, the strictness of their watchfulness had eased but Lulu still came by almost daily. They would talk of Maxie, sharing stories and perspectives of her. They mourned her together and Jason would often walk into the penthouse to find them cuddled up on the couch. Spinelli's arms wrapped around her as she lay against him, her head on his chest and her tears staining his shirt as his own fell unchecked down his cheeks. Jason would silently retreat upstairs loathe to disturb them, to interfere with what he hoped was a healing process for both of them.

Then came the day, two months ago, when Jason was once more in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, looking at him with an indefinable expression on his face, clearly reluctant to speak. "Spinelli," he began and he knew without being told that his ravaged heart would once again be rent asunder.

Lulu had been leaving from Crimson. She had been working a late shift trying to get the magazine out by the requisite deadline. She was tired but in high spirits because she was going to meet Johnny for a late night date. They had reconnected in the months since Maxie's death, both realized how much they missed each other, how unfair and mercurial life could be. So, Johnny sought out Lulu, declared his feelings for her and she agreed to try again. Lulu came to Spinelli, eager to share her new found joy but shy about upsetting him, about disrupting the fragile peace he had begun to make with the gigantic crater Maxie's death had formed in his soul, the devastating pain resulting from her unrelenting absence in his life.

Spinelli had been delighted for her, told her that her happiness could be his by proxy. "The Jackal only hopes that the Dark Prince will be true to you this time and shall he not be, he will answer to me…." He had contemplated throwing Jason's much more awesome ire into the threat but some unknown force made him hold back. He contented himself by embracing Lulu, his face sad and lined as he closed his eyes and momentarily imagined another blonde and beloved head nestled against his shoulder.

Spinelli sat stunned, listening to Jason as he attempted to recite the facts without emotion, "Elevator crashed…car fell to the bottom…died instantly…" All Spinelli could see as Jason spoke was Lulu's beloved face, hope and gladness written on it as she confided in him.

So, there he stood, dressed in a suit at another memorial gathering for someone he had loved with a great breadth of feeling though not the nearly the depth of what he had felt for Maxie. After all, Lulu _had _been the original blonde one. While Spinelli languished unnoticed and mute, dimly registered voices wafted about him.

"Yes, I hear the Spencers are suing the Metro Court…"

"Well, I don't think they'll be found liable, the cables and car just had their annual inspection the week before."

"Probably the Metro Court will pay off the Spencers with the money they get from suing the inspection company." It was a dry, cynical voice and he wasn't surprised to see it belonged to Edward Quartermaine.

Trust that eclectic clan to show up to pay their observances to someone that they had embraced as their own. They loved tempestuous and feisty Lulu Spencer as much as they despised her vagabond father. She too came to learn what kind and loyal hearts beat under the crusty, quarrelsome exteriors of the family elders and to return their affection. Still, try as they might to do right, to be grave and seemly and show their grief they seemed incapable of appropriate behavior for any longer than ten minute increments of time. Spinelli would have smiled at Edward's typically canny and perceptive, yet somewhat misplaced, outburst, if the muscles enabling him to do so had not taken early retirement and headed in some unknown southerly direction leaving him void of any expression except a mournful fatigue.

"Jason," it was Carly speaking somewhere behind him, her voice thick and exhausted, full of unshed tears. "Did you see her, Lulu? The other night when you came to the Metro Court, did you see her?" Her tone held a hopeful pleading note that he might have some last memory of his encounter with Lulu, some scrap of words or action that she could file away and hold safe within the recesses of her mind. Carly Jax loved her vivacious blonde cousin who reminded her so much of herself and it seemed impossible that she would never again come running to share some crisis which had turned her young life topsy-turvy.

Spinelli turned around to look at the twosome, startled by Carly's question. "Did Stone Cold indeed see Fair Lulu the night of her untimely death? Why then would he have neglected to transmit such pertinent information to his grasshopper?" Jason must have known that he, Carly, and everyone would have wanted to know the details of the meeting between Lulu and the last person to see her alive before the tragic fatal accident that precipitately ended her vibrant existence.

Jason squirmed uneasily under the combined grief stricken looks that Spinelli and Carly were directing toward him. He stuttered uncertainly, not quite sure what he could say, or even ought to say, to help assuage the terrible hurt felt by these two people who were both so important to him. "I…I, no, that is, I didn't…" He seemed to realize that he wasn't making much sense so he began again. "I intended to see Lulu, that's why I went to the Metro Court…"

"Why would Stone Cold go in search of the original blonde one?" Spinelli asked obviously puzzled as he vocalized the same question that was also evident in Carly's eyes.

"Yes, Jason, why would you?" Carly was confused. "It's not like you were particular friends with Lulu and you don't just look people up to chat with them, not about inconsequential things anyway."

"I just…well, I wanted to thank her. She had been great with helping Spinelli after…" Jason looked awkwardly at his roommate, not wanting to bring up the topic of Maxie's death which had so mortally wounded his friend. It didn't matter if he said it or not, he realized with a jolt of misery. It was clear that her absence was perpetually incised in the shadows surrounding his eyes, the slump of his shoulders and in the harsh lines bracketing his nose and mouth. 'When had they formed?' He thought with poignant wonder, his heart aching that Spinelli had to endure more grief, more loss without even being close to recovery from the first devastating blow. "I didn't see her, she wasn't in the office." Jason finished his statement abruptly not wanting to torture either Spinelli or Carly anymore than he already had.

"Oh," they breathed out their unified disappointment. It would appear that whatever Lulu's last thoughts were on her final night on Earth, it was a secret never to be deciphered.

When he and Jason returned to the penthouse, both enveloped within a somber pall of silence, they found Sam waiting for them outside the door. Sam had been missing from both their lives ever since Maxie's death. She too had been mourning the passing of the impetuous, outspoken blonde who was one of the few female friends Sam McCall possessed. She couldn't bear to see or be around Spinelli in his awful all consuming austerity of grief which threatened to deride her own deeply felt sorrow. So, she left the spiritual and emotional caretaking of her young partner in the compassionate and capable hands of Jason and Lulu while she threw herself into work, shouldering the responsibilities of the caseload incurred by both herself and the absent Jackal.

"Sam, what are you doing here?" Jason's voice was weary but edged with an underlying edge of irritation. He knew what an almost insurmountable task faced him as the next days and weeks unfolded and Spinelli grappled yet again with the loss of someone close to him. He feared for his roommate's fragile grip on sanity, on life itself. He simply didn't possess the reserves to deal with another person's needs or concerns brought from the distant exterior world into their muffled, cocooned, and tentative subsistence where death appeared to dwell as their constant companion.

"Hey," she said by way of greeting, her voice soft and husky as she looked at the bent head of Spinelli with concern. He seemed unaware of her presence. "I just came by to see if you needed any help, if there was anything I could do…" She traded a quick uneasy glance with Jason, worried about Spinelli's lack of reaction as well as Jason's grim expression that failed to mask how stressed and fatigued he felt. "Spinelli," she stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on her partner's shoulder causing him to look up at her, his eyes dark patient holes of pure misery. "I am _so _sorry about Lulu…is there anything at all you need, anyway I could help you get through this?" He just stared at her dumbly, too emotionally drained to even muster up the energy of a reply which politeness and manners would usually dictate that he at least attempt.

"Thanks, Sam," Jason spoke brusquely as he shouldered past her, intent on opening the door and getting Spinelli inside and onto the sofa before he collapsed. "I…we appreciate the offer but things are covered here. You can help by just doing what you already are, by keeping McCall and Jackal running smoothly." He had gotten the door open, shepherding Spinelli inside, it was clear he wasn't going to invite Sam in.

She gave a resigned sigh, she knew how impossible it was to argue with Jason when he became intractable. Turning to leave, she cast a final offer over her shoulder, "Okay, I'll let you guys get some rest but give me a call if you change your mind. I'm always available for my partner…" She smiled gently at Spinelli whose lips quirked up in a mimicking parody of the action. It was the last view she had of him as Jason resolutely closed the door, once more sealing the two of them within the quiet confines of the penthouse.

A few days later, Spinelli managed to convince Jason to go for a motorcycle ride to clear his head and get some fresh air by promising that he would be fine on his own for a while. Once Jason was safely away from the penthouse he called Sam. He didn't know why he felt awkward, uncomfortable even at the thought of calling her, or anyone really, while Jason was in residence but he simply did. He thought it would be enough to hear someone else's voice, to experience a temporary reprieve from the dismal thoughts circling endlessly through his mind and the oppressive silence of Jason's constant presence.

Spinelli didn't know how it was that they ended up together on the couch in the penthouse living room, his abandoned laptop once more seated on his knees as he ferreted through the records of one of Sam's clients whom she suspected of not being on the level with her. He had missed this side of his life which had once been so integral to it that a few hours absence from his cyber companion had induced symptoms similar to withdrawal. For the first time in months he was engrossed in something else besides morbid introspection and it felt wonderful.

They were busy chatting and speculating, going over Spinelli's findings which seemed to support Sam's suspicions of false representation when the penthouse door opened and Jason entered. They didn't notice him. He stood there for a few moments, his keys clasped tightly in his hand, vertical frown lines etched between his eyes. "Hey," he finally said, fighting to keep his voice neutral, "What are you doing here, Sam?"

She looked up startled, surprised to see him, Spinelli had intimated that Jason would be gone for hours yet. Sam felt Spinelli's muscles tense as he grew rigid and watchful beside her. Without quite knowing why, she instinctively lied, somehow feeling that she needed to protect Spinelli who was still in an emotionally precarious situation and unable to deal with Jason's displeasure. "I just dropped by to ask Spinelli to do a computer search for me. I've gotten better but there's no one to match the Jackal's skills." It came out easily, convincingly and she could sense Spinelli relax as he let out an almost inaudible exhalation of pent up air.

Jason's eyes narrowed as he voiced his displeasure, "Spinelli shouldn't be bothered with business right now, he isn't up to it. I thought we had agreed…"

He was interrupted by Spinelli's eager voice, for the first time in months he sounded like his old self, "Au contraire, Stone Cold," he protested eagerly, his eyes shining, "The Jackal is revitalized, Fair Samantha was right, putting my mind and my cyber talents to work solving this riddle has invigorated me. I didn't realize how much I had missed being involved in casework." He looked up at Jason and gulped as he saw the censorious look his mentor was giving the two of them. "And would like the opportunity to be involved in further such exercises…" He trailed off, his voice subdued and beseeching.

Sam was shocked in the change in Spinelli's attitude and demeanor ever since he had become aware of Jason's presence. "That's a great idea, Spinelli!" She spoke with a cheerful enthusiasm as she tried to retrieve the expression of lively interest he had been wearing while they worked in tandem. As Sam spoke she steadfastly ignored Jason's adamantine glare. "Truthfully, I could use your expertise and I have missed working with you as well." She smiled brightly at Spinelli who responded with a small, painful grin all the while looking with trepidation through his shaggy bangs at Jason standing grim and disapproving by the door.

"Stone Cold?" He said tentatively, the question clearly evident in his tone while Sam wondered at his need to ask permission and the likelihood of Jason granting it.

Jason's face softened slightly as he looked at the young man sitting next to Sam. "We'll see," he said roughly, his harshness transformed into an affection that was difficult to dispute. "For now though," he added, once again staring directly at Sam, his eyes flint-like, "I think you should go, Sam."

It was a command not a suggestion and Sam started to bridle at the arrogance of Jason Morgan thinking he could tell her what to do, when she belatedly remembered that Spinelli was the one that mattered. She didn't want him to be placed in an awkward position if there was a power struggle between her and Jason. Anyway, she knew she'd lose if Spinelli was forced to choose between her and his mentor.

Smiling artificially, she nodded her head in agreement, "Yeah, I have some errands to run."

She stood up and started walking towards the door. When she passed Jason she was disconcerted by the almost palpable waves of enmity emanating from him. For a brief moment she wondered if it was safe to leave Spinelli with Jason in the mood he was in but she recognized that his anger was directed solely at her. 'Besides, Jason would never hurt Spinelli…' Her thoughts were making her extremely uncomfortable and all she wanted to do was to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the penthouse and breathe fresh air.

Turning once more she gave a small wave to Spinelli, who raised a listless hand in turn. His drooping body posture and closed in facial expression once again reminding her of what he had endured of late. "See you soon, partner," she said lightly. Jason had the door open and impatiently steered her through the opening. Before she could speak, whether to politely bid him farewell or berate him-she couldn't say-the door was slammed in her face and she stood there excluded, open-mouthed and fuming.

The door to the penthouse edged open, it was late, past midnight and Jason, a beaten, disheveled, weary Jason, stood on the threshold. He had been quiet as only he knew how to be. There hadn't been a sound from the insertion of the key in the lock to the turning of the knob to the final slow pushing open of the door itself in order to prevent any telltale squeaks. Yet, for all his subtle stealth, his surreptious attempt to enter his home unnoticed was irrelevant.

Spinelli was on the sofa, his body draped supinely across its length, one leg splayed over the back while the other dragged haphazardly along the floor. His eyes were covered by his left arm flung carelessly across the upper part of his face and the television remote was held loosely in his right hand. The television was on but muted and the only light in the room came from the moving play of color from the shifting shapes displayed on the screen. The flickering light made the silent unmoving form on the couch appear unreal, insubstantial. For a brief moment Jason's heart was in his throat as he thought with superstitious terror that he was seeing merely the corporeal form of his roommate and that his damaged spirit had finally fled this earthly plane.

Then the recumbent figure stirred, emitting a low confused moan and Jason's brief moment of fear was replaced by a rush of relief as he realized that Spinelli was only sleeping, was caught in the grip of one the frequent nightmares plaguing him these past months. When Jason was home, which was most nights now, Spinelli retired to his room where he always had his i-pod or his own television-or most often both-playing until he fell into a restless doze neither quite fully asleep nor fully awake. Later Jason would come in and switch off the electronic sleep aids and sit next to him on his bed running a gentle hand caressingly through his thick, tangled hair until under his soothing touch the boy succumbed to a truly healing, dreamless sleep. Oftentimes Jason would stay the night, sleeping lightly next to him, then awakening before dawn and stealing back to his own room before Spinelli would wake up and feel embarrassed at being such a burden on his mentor.

Yet, on the rare occasions that Jason would be out of a night anymore, Spinelli couldn't stand the solitude, the pressing in of the walls of the regrettably pink room as unhappy memories swirled around him and echoing voices susurrated through the still, dead air pulling at the fragile threads of his tenuous reason. He could only stay in the penthouse if he were downstairs, close to the door and the illusion of freedom it offered. He knew intellectually that he could leave, that he wasn't truly a captive but he hesitated to be gone were Jason to return. He didn't know if it was because he was afraid of him or for him but either one was an effective enough force to keep him tethered to the overstuffed sofa staring blankly at a television screen that more and more was becoming his only exposure to the external world.

"Spinelli," Jason gently shook the shoulder of his dreaming roommate, trying to not arouse him too abruptly. "C'mon wake up, I'm back now, you're safe. It's just a nightmare…" The young hacker's eyes were open but unseeing, their brilliant green washed out by the dampening effects of the artificial light coming from the television screen.

Suddenly his brain caught up with his change in awareness and he sat up with a frenzied cry of "Stone Cold!" He grabbed Jason frantic for contact with another living being, to feel warm flesh as he tried to dispel the demons haunting his dreams. "You're here!" He was nearly crying as he pulled at the older man who succumbed to the urgent tugging and upon sitting down on the sofa found his arms full of an agitated Spinelli clinging to him with a bruising force borne of panic.

"Ssh, ssh," he whispered, as he ran his hand around his back in pacifying circles like one did with a crying baby. "It was just a dream, nothing more. Nothing is going to hurt you, I won't let it."

Slowly Spinelli settled down, relaxing his hold on Jason, his breathing becoming regular under the repetitive whispering combined with the calming rubbing of his back. He let out a sigh and tucked his head against his mentor's chest, feeling safe and secure as he always did in Jason's presence. "Sorry," he mumbled drowsily, not wanting to move from the warmth and security of his haven but knowing that Jason would pull back soon, that it must be costing him to put up with the unaccustomed and unwelcome physical contact.

Jason's chin was resting on the top of his head and he seemed in no hurry to let Spinelli go. "What was the dream about? Do you remember why it frightened you?"

The rumble of his voice vibrated through Spinelli's entire body as he wrinkled his nose in reluctance not wanting to return to the jagged dark despair Jason had just rescued him from. "You…" and now the tears were falling freely as the sharp ache of unimaginable, unendurable loss was revisited, "It was about you, Stone Cold. There was shooting, gunfire and you fell not to arise again. The Jackal saw it, you were dead…" The shaking began again as all of Jason's magic efforts at appeasement evaporated in an instant.

"Spinelli!" This time Jason's voice was sharp and he leaned away from the embrace, tilting the boy's chin up forcing his tear stained gaze to meet his own. "Look at me! I'm right here-alive and well-not dead. I'm fine." He tried to smile, to underline his words but a shadow flitted across his eyes and his lips couldn't quite manage to curl up in reassurance.

Spinelli's senses were on hyper-alert and he pulled out of Jason's grip, suspicion clouding his eyes as he searched his mentor's face. Jason actually made an abortive move as though to pull him back into the hug but his native stoicism reasserted itself and he sat there patiently undergoing his roommate's doubting scrutiny.

"That is patently proven…you are indeed unharmed." Spinelli shook his head trying to dislodge the tenaciously clinging tendrils of the nightmare. "Yet," he was speaking slowly, trying to put his finger on what Jason wasn't saying, what he wasn't telling him. "There is something else, another mishap that Stone Cold is attempting to shield his grasshopper from but it is a hopeless endeavor for he shall know of it. You must tell me Stone Cold," he urged him, his eyes large and full of foreboding.

Jason sighed miserably and ran the side of his hand across his brow rubbing at it in a displacement behavior as he tried to avoid answering Spinelli, to save him from further pain. Still, he knew it was fruitless, if he didn't tell him he would hear it from another source. "Yeah," he agreed, "Something else did happen. There _was_ a gunfight and I wasn't harmed but someone else was…" He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Spinelli, wondering at his precognition. "How you would be dreaming about it though, that's just weird."

Spinelli ignored his final commentary, intent only on what Jason had said about someone else being hurt. "Who?" He pleaded with his friend to tell him. He dreaded hearing the answer but anything, no matter how bad, was better than this awful suspense as he contemplated who among his dwindling circle of loved ones could have been injured or…no, he couldn't even envisage a more permanent outcome.

Jason bent his head, he couldn't bear to watch Spinelli's face one more time as he told him something so cold and clinically irrevocable but he had no choice. "Sam." He said the name in a low voice, it was pulled out of him in all its brutal rawness. He still hadn't absorbed it, processed the fact that she was no more and now he had to impart the information to Spinelli that one more person whom he had valued, loved and depended upon was ripped away from him-honestly, this time-from both of them.

Reviews are always appreciated


	2. Revelations

Revelations

Spinelli shifted uneasily under the dead weight pinning him to the bed. He had been aware of all the nights that Jason had come into his room, his touch and his consoling presence enabling him to finally slip into a true sleep. Yet, he was always relieved when he would wake the next morning and Jason would be gone so that they could both pretend mutual ignorance about the nocturnal visitations. It seemed that whereas previously their relationship had been built on openness and trust, an unspoken camaraderie which he had never before known and had so deeply treasured, now it was all predicated on secrets, uncertainty and the facades that they each wore around the other.

Tonight was the first night that Jason purposefully accompanied Spinelli upstairs and lay in bed with him as part of the unspoken agreement that they each needed companionship. This was the only one of the recent deaths which had impacted Jason as much as it had Spinelli-perhaps even more so. After all, Jason had known and loved Sam before he ever met Spinelli. They planned on raising her daughter together and when that hope, that future was ripped from their grasp they reinvented themselves as lovers which was the incarnation during which Spinelli first encountered them. He also bore melancholy witness to their catastrophic break up, the way they verbally and even physically viciously tore one another to shreds.

Still, during these last months they seemed to be beginning to find their way back into each other's lives. Spinelli had formed his private investigator partnership with the adventuresome and kind brunette who always held a special place in his heart even when they hadn't seen much of each other. He secretly nurtured the hope that Stone Cold and Fair Samantha would once again feel the prick of Cupid's arrow. He though now, that they were both older and wiser, they might strive to perhaps form a more mature and lasting bond.

Since Maxie's death he was sunk so deeply within his own enervating ennui that he hadn't pondered anyone else's happiness except perhaps Lulu's. Yet, there appeared an aloofness, a disinterest in Stone Cold's attitude towards Sam of late, at least whenever Spinelli happened to witness an interaction between them. So perhaps Jason's grief was colored by guilt that he hadn't treated Sam better and now she was gone and there was never going to be an opportunity to offer her recompense for his indifferent attitude toward her.

Spinelli tried to shift Jason's arm off of him and when that didn't work he began to wriggle out from under it. He managed to escape the suffocating feeling of being trapped and was beginning to slowly edge off the bed when a voice spoke out of the darkness. "Where are you going?" The words were mild, the tone quietly inquiring but still a tremor of fear tingled up his spine.

"Stone Cold, the Jackal regrets awakening you from your well earned slumber."

He paused as he anxiously racked his brain, trying to devise a plan to hide his true intentions from his all seeing, all knowing mentor. The bottom line was that Spinelli was not sure if he could maintain an aura of casualness as he attempted to treat Jason's interrogation as an example of the new normal between the two roommates. 'Roommates literally now,' he thought to himself without humor, an edge of hysteria creeping into his thought processes. He had to make this work, he just had to, he knew it would most likely be his only chance to pursue the mystery that was keeping him from sleeping.

"I…I," he stammered for a moment before he managed to dredge up a modicum of calm and forcefully dampened his rampaging pulse rate. "That is the Jackal," he was always more comfortable, more centered when speaking of himself in the third person, "Needs to use the facilities." It was brilliant, a stroke of genius, not even Jason could be suspicious of such an excuse and like the best of subterfuges it also happened to be the absolute truth.

Jason just uttered a half sigh as he replaced his head on the pillow, "Don't be long…" fluttered out of his lips, as he drifted back to sleep exhausted from the night's excursion.

Slowly and with careful precision Spinelli turned the interior handle on his bedroom door; he tried to make absolutely no noise as he unconsciously mimicked Jason's entry into the penthouse from earlier that very evening. The door opened obediently and soundlessly as he carefully edged his way through the narrow aperture created, casting one final cautious glance back into the darkened room. His dark adjusted eyes did a final sweep of the room, lingering on the unmoving form occupying his bed. He couldn't make out much more than the large mass that was Jason dimly limned by the glow from his bedside clock. He was still, apparently undisturbed by Spinelli's movements as he exited his bedroom. He pulled the door closed but didn't shut it, not willing to risk the loud distinctive sound of the latch clicking home in the stilled hush that gripped the penthouse.

His heart beat so loudly that he was concerned he couldn't hear anything else. He crept slowly and painfully down the penthouse stairs and to the front door where he reenacted the feat he had performed on his bedroom door only moments ago. Any minute now he expected to feel the iron clad clasp of Jason's large hand on his shoulder and his voice asking him in its deceptively soft way, that couched danger within each syllable uttered, what exactly he thought he was doing. He even jumped convulsively once so convinced was he that the event would occur, had actually occurred but there was nothing to be seen or heard except the wild pounding of his own heart.

He was out on the street, his breathing ragged as he ran through the shadows, staying out of the light pooled at the base of streetlamps. Anyone observing him would have taken him for a criminal. He frequently stopped and checked back over his shoulder as though anticipating pursuit, choosing to travel solely through the back streets and alleys of the slumbering city.

He had questioned Jason, forced him to tell him how and why it was that Sam died. Jason resisted his interrogation, protesting that he didn't want to engender more nightmares in his roommate. Yet, Spinelli was obdurate and for the first time ever the grasshopper managed to sway the Master. His eyes-lost pleading pools of jade-compelled Jason to speak of the phone call he received.

"Sam called," he spoke hesitantly, his voice thick with doubt as he wondered if telling Spinelli what had happened was the right thing to do. "She said that she had been following someone as part of a case and that it had turned bad. She was trapped down by the old cannery, under fire and asked if I could come help her."

"When did she call?" Spinelli kept his tone neutral. He needed information and he knew if he aroused Jason's suspicions in any way he would simply shut down, stop talking and order Spinelli to bed.

Jason paused in his narrative flow, his head tilted and his eyes sharply focused as he stared at Spinelli. "What does it matter?" He challenged him and when the younger man dropped his eyes and shrugged, he sighed thinking he had overreacted. "I don't know, late I guess," he admitted. "She was panicked and I could hear the sound of gunfire. I just reacted."

"While you were out?" Spinelli wasn't to be denied, he possessed an innate thirst for each detail, "That's when she called, when you were out?"

"Yeah," Jason shrugged, "I'd gone for a walk to clear my head. It's funny," he gave a strangled laugh, "I was actually thinking about Sam, about how she had suggested it would be good for you to go back to work as a P.I. I was going to drop by the office, talk about a slow entry back into the job for you. You seemed so happy, with her, that day I found the two of you together…" He reached over and gently pushed Spinelli's hair back, away from his eyes, his gaze was wistful, reminiscent. "I wanted to see you like that again and if working with Sam would achieve it then so be it. I was on my way to the offices of Jackal and McCall when instead she called me."

Spinelli looked at him narrowly, watching Jason's every gesture, each expression, trying to gauge the truth of his story. "McCall and Jackal," he corrected his mentor automatically. "So, what happened then, when you got to the cannery?"

Jason sighed, "Spinelli, what good will hearing this do you? It won't change anything, it won't bring her back."

"I need to know," Spinelli insisted, "With Maxie, with Lulu-there were so many questions, so many unresolved issues and what ifs. They invade my dreams, they give me no peace. I can't go through that again, Stone Cold, I can't! You were there this time, you saw what happened, you can tell me, you must tell me!"

He had lost his reasoning tone, he was pure anguish as he practically begged Jason to explain to him what happened. He couldn't accept that someone else was dead, especially someone so alive and vibrant as Sam was. It was as though he was cursed and if Jason could say something, relate to him some little fact that could absolve him then maybe, just maybe some tiny portion of this all consuming grief might in some way be alleviated.

Jason was torn, Spinelli could see it in his face, in the way his hands sought each other out as they always did when he was troubled or wrestling with a decision. He held his breath, petrified to speak in case a single word from him would sway the balance against his favor making Jason unreachable, as he refused to speak anymore about what transpired this dreadful night.

Spinelli's reticence was rewarded. Jason looked down at his hands unwilling to look into his roommates eyes but he continued on in a dead, defeated tone. "Sam was against a wall behind a crate and I began shooting to help shield her as soon as I arrived. She…was low on ammunition," he was struggling with the story, reliving those awful moments down on the dock when he had fatally failed his friend, his one time lover. "I slipped in next to her so that we were together. You know there wasn't much that Sam and I couldn't take on as a team…just not tonight."

His voice faltered and at any other time Spinelli would have taken pity on him, would have insisted he stopped speaking and tried to comfort him but not tonight. He needed to hear everything, to know what his friends suffered in their last battle together, how it came about that Stone Cold could not protect his Fair Samantha this last fateful time. "Go on," he was insistent, his tone almost cruel. Jason looked up at him momentarily startled by the transformation in the young man. Spinelli's face was set, his eyes resolute and it was clear he wouldn't leave the subject alone until he heard the entire tale.

Jason swallowed, his mouth was dry and he longed for some water but he needed to finish telling Spinelli the whole story first. He ran the palm of his right hand over his face wearily and continued, "I don't know how it happened. I thought that we were evenly matched, two of us and two of them. Sam was at the edge of the crate, I was further back behind it but I didn't think it mattered because the shooters were to our right, she should have been safe where she was…Maybe there was another shooter, maybe a ricochet…I don't know, it was dark we were firing at each other based only on muzzle flash. At first it was going well, I hit one of the other gunmen and so now the odds shifted in our favor. Sam hadn't fired in the last several seconds and I thought she was taking a break but then I turned to look and she…" Jason suddenly surged forward on the couch, his hands covering his face as he began to cry, great racking dry sobs which shook his whole body.

Spinelli had never seen Jason like this and he immediately forgot his quest to discover what had happened to Sam as he tried to find some way to console his mentor. "Stone Cold," he put a tentative hand on Jason's arm knowing how much Jason disliked physical contact outside of romantic relationships and interactions with children. "I am sure you did all you could to ensure Fair Samantha's safety, sometimes there are unforeseen contingencies for which we are simply unable to prepare." His life over the past year had certainly been living proof of that reality he thought to himself dully. "You should not blame yourself, I do not, Fair Samantha would not. She called you because of her faith in you and you came, you did not fail her. It was fate that did so, it was those that killed her who are culpable not you, never you." Spinelli spoke his words of reassurance almost automatically. Yet, he was disconcerted to find that he wasn't sure that he actually believed in everything he was saying to Jason.

"I didn't save her, the situation wasn't that extreme, nothing I haven't dealt with a thousand times before but she was shot. She was lying there all curled up and so small." Jason was talking again, the only evidence of his recent loss of control was a sheen of moisture occluding the brilliance of his eyes as it reflected the flickering light from the television screen. "I killed him, the last shooter but it was too late to help Sam. I went to her, picked her up, held her…there was blood, so much blood and her eyes…" He shook his head as though that would dislodge the memory and save him from ever having to see it again but the delicate chemical tracery between the neurons of his brain had already been sketched and it was now an indelible part of his mind. "They were blank, she was gone just like that…one minute she was firing her gun and the next…there was nothing just silence." He wasn't stone cold, he wasn't invincible, he was just a man who hadn't managed to protect someone who asked for his help and she paid for his negligence with her mortality.

"You stayed with Fair Samantha, kept watch over her." It wasn't a question, Spinelli was just affirming what he knew Jason would have felt honor bound to do.

"Yeah," Jason leaned back into the couch cushions, his arm stretched along the sofa behind Spinelli. "I called it in." The concept of Jason Morgan being the person to report a crime scene in Port Charles, particularly one he had been involved with, clearly illustrated to Spinelli how skewed his world had become during these last few months. He was beginning to feel like a permanent guest at the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland while the Queen of Hearts perpetually screamed 'off with her head!'

"The police believed your story?"

Obviously they had or Jason wouldn't now be sitting next to Spinelli. Yet, he felt like there was something off about what Jason said, what he described. There was a distinct flatness to his voice, even his unexpected emotional outburst possessed a calculated aspect to it as though he meant to distract Spinelli from questioning him too closely. He couldn't quite articulate what was bothering him and he thought perhaps he was just looking for answers where there weren't any, wanting to discover that there was some meaning behind Sam's death besides random violence. Still, he knew Jason so well, better than almost anyone, and he thought his roommate was holding something back but he couldn't determine if it was because he was trying to protect Spinelli or himself.

"It turned out that the man Sam had been following went to the docks to meet his dealer and they made Sam and that's when the shooting started. Both the dealer and the buyer were known to the cops and the scene supported what I said. They took my gun for ballistics elimination and let me go." He laid his head back against the couch and closed his eyes, his face drawn and exhausted looking. Spinelli was startled at the sudden feel of Jason's right hand on the back of his neck gently rubbing and squeezing. "I'm beat," he whispered huskily, never ceasing the massaging motion, "Let's go to bed, see if we can get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day."

Spinelli sat paralyzed, unsure of how to react to Jason's atypical behavior. He shivered as Jason's hand unexpectedly moved away from his neck and began kneading his tense shoulders, alternating between them with an almost painful pressure. He knew without being told that Jason meant for them to go to bed in the same room, in the same bed and that this time there would be no subterfuge about it, merely the raw pretext of grief. Spinelli felt as though an iron band was wrapped around his chest constricting his breathing and for an instant he almost gave into the impulse to leap off the couch and dart for the front door to try and escape the penthouse which had gradually and without his awareness metamorphosed from a home into a prison. Yet, with an internal discipline he was mildly astonished to find he owned, he managed to sit passively, accepting Jason's unsought attentions while he fought to control his racing heart. He knew he had neither the physical strength nor the emotional will to contest Jason and so it appeared that his only option was to submit.

Together they ascended the staircase, Jason's arm wrapped securely around Spinelli's shoulders forcing him to walk in perfect tandem with him. There was the briefest pause in their progression as Jason eyed his own bedroom door but then he continued on toward Spinelli's room, the hacker as much in unwilling thrall to his mentor as the moon to the earth. Jason sat Spinelli down on the edge of his own bed and kneeling down untied his shoelaces and removed his tennis shoes. Then he rifled through his bureau drawers and pulled out a pair of sleep pants and a soft, worn cotton t-shirt.

"Put these on," it wasn't a request but a command. Spinelli complied, hunched over in miserable embarrassment as he hastily exchanged shirts while attempting to minimize the exposure of his bare chest. He pulled his jeans down and pulled the sleep pants on over his underwear. He turned back toward the bed and saw that Jason had stripped off his own t-shirt and jeans and was now only wearing a pair of boxers.

Jason pulled back the covers and with a quick dip of his head indicated that Spinelli should lie down. Reluctantly the younger man crawled onto the bed where he lay on his back, rigidly still, his eyes fixed unswervingly on the ceiling as he tensely awaited Jason's next move. Jason climbed in next to him and pulled the sheet and blanket up over both of them, leaving the bedspread at the foot of the bed. Spinelli tensed as Jason reached across him stretching to turn off the light. It was as though the absence of light immediately magnified every one of Spinelli's unknown and unarticulated fears. He remained frozen, his body in stasis, barely breathing as he anticipated Jason's next move.

A warm arm snaked out of the darkness and curled under his back tugging at his inert body until he rolled on his side so that he was now facing Jason though all he could see was a vague silhouette, denser and darker than the surrounding air. Jason's hand reached up and stroked through his hair in the same calming gesture he had used all the previous nights he stayed with him. "Get some sleep, Spinelli. Don't worry about anything. I'm here to take care of you."

Relief coursed through Spinelli's body as he realized that Jason intended nothing more than for the two of them to sleep. He lay perfectly still not moving a muscle while Jason's rhythmic caresses began to falter as sleep overtook him. Spinelli intentionally slowed his own breathing to mimic Jason's, their synchronicity of inhalation and exhalation lulling his mentor further along the pathway to oblivion until finally he rolled over on his back deeply and completely asleep.

Spinelli edged away from him, keeping his movements controlled and gradual until they were entirely separate with precious inches of open space between the two of them. He lay sleepless, staring unseeingly into the darkness of the room as he contemplated the alterations in his life which culminated in his present predicament. Jason was restless and uneasy in his sleep, muttering unintelligibly. He raised his right arm as though to ward off an attacker and flung it wildly across the bed effectively pinioning Spinelli who hadn't anticipated the movement.

Jason's unsettled dreams were indicators to Spinelli of a troubled mind or conscience. The younger man was tormented by more than just grief since Lulu's death. Jason's changed attitude toward him, toward Sam had been an underlying source of disquiet which after the terrible events of this night was beginning to coalesce into suspicions that he could no longer choose to ignore. His heart didn't want to accept what his more analytical mind was beginning to theorize about his mentor, that he might be culpable of deeds of unthinkable depravity. Spinelli could no longer afford to indulge his denial and there was only one place he could think to go that might help answer his questions and hopefully prove his doubts groundless, just the fevered imaginings of an overwrought mind.

Panting, Spinelli stopped short, he was here. The alley at the rear of the old cannery was entirely dark, no light penetrated the narrow, foreboding space. He stood still for a minute scenting the air as he waited for his heartbeat to slow and his lungs to stop laboring. His eyes already accustomed to the night made out some vague outlines of objects which he presumed were the crates Jason and Sam had taken ineffectual refuge behind. He reached into the pocket of the light jacket he had thrown on over the clothes he had worn to bed and pulled out a slim flashlight that produced a powerful, penetrating beam when he shined it around the confined area of the alley.

It took a moment for him to get his bearings as his pupils constricted in response to the brilliant light after the dimness of the night. The first thing that caught his eye was the bright, almost obscenely cheerful, yellow police tape cordoning off the area around the crates. It swayed gently in the slight breeze that was coming in from the harbor and Spinelli swallowed uneasily as he steeled himself to duck under it and observe what lay beyond it.

There on the rutted and gouged remnants of the paved surface of the alley roadway was inscribed the final marker representing Sam McCall's existence outside of her grave. The chalk outline was stark, the crudely drawn lines were angular and impersonal and except for the exceedingly small shape illustrated had nothing in common with the lovely, vivacious woman it commemorated. Both inside and outside of the diagram were blotches of dark red indicating where her life force was inexorably pumped out of her body by a valiant heart attempting in vain to counteract the damage caused by high velocity metal projectiles.

Spinelli felt nauseated, he fought hard to keep from vomiting as he stared at the scene of Sam's death. He hadn't realized there would be such a graphic reminder of the violence which transpired in this alley mere hours ago. He scanned the area carefully with his flashlight as he looked for confirmation of Jason's story so that he could allay his own worries and fears. It appeared that there was no evidence to support either his innocence or guilt. In fact, there was nothing there but the crates and the forlorn drawing on the ground.

He turned away with a sigh, "It was foolish of the Jackal to come here and risk incurring the wrath of Stone Cold for the attainment of such meager knowledge. It was to be expected that the police would have removed such evidentiary material as was to be found."

He was mumbling to himself as he reluctantly started back towards the street. As much as he wished to find something exculpatory so that he no longer need suspect Jason, he was also simply enjoying being outside and on his own as he breathed in the chill, pre-dawn air. He missed the uncomplicated freedom of being able to walk around without feeling the solicitous, or oftentimes censorious, eyes of his roommate monitoring his every move.

Spinelli was back out on the side street getting ready to return to the penthouse where he fervently hoped Jason was still soundly sleeping when he stopped abruptly. He stood there biting his lip, his eyes unfocused and glazed as he ransacked his brain to discover what was disturbing him. There was some fact which his conscious mind had missed but his subconscious had noted and filed it away and was now sending out a neural memo that he did indeed have within his grasp information to help him once and for all remove his uncertainty about Sam's death.

He spun around on his heel and headed straight back into the alley, his flashlight again in his palm as it once more lit up the crime scene tape, the crates and the chalk outline. He stared transfixed for a moment and then tears spontaneously formed in his eyes and began to trail down his cheeks. At that precise instant, Damian Spinelli's innocence, battered thing that it was, utterly evaporated never to be reclaimed.

"Ah, Fair Samantha," he moaned as grief and guilt warred within him. This time he couldn't control the urge as he turned and vomited though what he produced was little more than bile as his appetite of late had been sacrificed to his constant ongoing state of misery.

Spinelli rested his forehead against the clammy, wet stones of the cannery wall. His eyes were squeezed shut but it was to no avail as his brain insisted on running a full color re-enactment of what he now knew for the truth of what occurred during the shoot out in the alley. He fully believed that Jason intentionally pushed Sam out into the line of fire and his proof was twofold.

At first glance, it appeared where Sam's body had fallen was consistent with Jason's story that she was unprotected from a shooter with a different line of sight or perhaps a ricochet shot. The diagram and the positioning of the crate both supported what he said but Spinelli noticed something else. It was the faintest of clues and he wasn't surprised that the crime scene unit overlooked it. After all, this was one time they hadn't suspected Jason of a crime and Spinelli knew that there would be no ballistics evidence to counteract their analysis of the shoot out.

On the far side of the crate Jason and Sam sheltered behind was an area of crushed leaves and dirt that ran in a straight line as though the debris had accumulated against some object in its path. The crate itself was several feet away from the windblown material and the actual ground around the edge of the large wooden box was free of any such equivalent detritus. It was an insignificant factor when measured against dead bodies and shell casings, which is why at first Spinelli's mind had noted the anomaly but hadn't really registered it as anything of importance. Yet, if events had transpired in the way Spinelli now thought they had, then the disconnect between where the crate had once been and was now currently situated indeed became a most damning indictment of Jason's guilt.

Spinelli was sure that Jason had shoved Sam out into the line of fire, probably right after they fired off rounds themselves so he could be sure there would be a series of retaliatory shots. Then, afterwards, when Sam and the last shooter were dead, Jason surveyed the scene with a practiced cold calculation that caused shivers to erupt along Spinelli's spine as he visualized it. Jason had seen that the position of the crate would give lie to his story of Sam being partially covered but still fatally exposed. It would have been too far away from where she lay to match up with someone just falling forward as a natural response to being shot.

Spinelli closed his eyes and fought down a further uprising of bile, "There was nothing natural about what had happened to Fair Samantha," he thought to himself bitterly.

He could envision Jason calmly repositioning the crate and looking around the area appraisingly. He had killed off the second of the shooters and was now the only survivor of the original quartet. He hadn't actually killed Sam and so he was secure in his innate ability to convince the responding police that his version of what took place in the alley was the correct one. Jason Morgan was famous for being cool and collected under fire and if he then tinged his story with one iota of the break in composure he had falsified in front of Spinelli earlier that evening the investigators would have been doubly convinced of his innocence. The young hacker was sure that it had doubtless been an Oscar worthy performance.

Even Mac Scorpio in his fervor to catch and convict Jason Morgan of any crime would laugh at the idea of a line of undisturbed dirt as evidence of a homicide. Spinelli himself knew it wouldn't stand up in court. Still, it was really only the first piece of evidence which persuaded him Jason had indeed set Sam McCall up to be killed. The second factor was something which hadn't registered, at least not when Jason initially mentioned it, not until he had come down to this God forsaken alley and seen it with his own eyes, it was the blood.

"I went to her, picked her up, held her…there was blood, so much blood…"

Stone Cold had been right, there was so much blood. Spinelli had seen it for himself and that meant if Jason had picked Sam up, had clutched her to him in an agony of grief, there was absolutely no way the sticky, viscous, crimson fluid wouldn't have transferred itself to his hands, to his clothes, to his face. Yet, when Spinelli saw him after he returned directly from the crime scene in his usual uniform of jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket there hadn't been a speck of blood on his skin or clothing never mind the amounts that truly would have been produced as Sam bled out. She hadn't been in the arms of her ex-lover Jason when she died. No, she had breathed her last lying at the satisfied feet of Jason Morgan, mob enforcer, as he coldly watched her expire. Then after shifting the crime scene around to his satisfaction, he pulled out his cell phone and called the police.

Spinelli was sure that was how the homicidal drama enacted here had played out tonight. He knew though he possessed no tangible proof of his undaunted certainty. If patterns of leaves and dust weren't evidence how much less was the _absence_ of blood on Jason any type of corroboration of his culpability. Anyway, Spinelli was willing to bet that Jason had only told him about holding Sam as she expired in order to embellish his tale, to engender Spinelli's compassion for what he endured. He had no verification, no basis to support his suspicions or to enable him to go to the police. Even if he did have something more substantive to offer, he wouldn't accuse Jason.

How could he? Jason had done this because of him, because of Spinelli and his connection to Sam. He shared in the encumbrance of guilt equally, she was dead because of both of them. Spinelli turned around, his back now against the wall as he slowly slid down it. His knees buckling and his head spinning he sat on the filthy ground of the alley his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. He rocked back and forth, he didn't know what to think, who to turn to, or where to go.

"Maximista," he groaned, the single word bouncing off the opposite wall and echoing as it died away. He wanted her presence, needed her common sense advice delivered in a rapid fire cascade of words at the end of which she would turn and smile gloriously at him, her regal pronouncements binding law to her eager serf. If only she hadn't died, he could face his fears and doubt if she were just there to share the burden, to place her tiny hand in his and say, "Here's what we'll do…" and they would.

He passionately hated the anonymous pharmacy clerk who had misread the prescription and given her the wrong tablets. Spinelli was crying now, his head resting on his knees, the sobs welling up from deep within him, his grief at her absence was just as tender as though he was hearing of her death anew.

"I guess…it was something to do with her medication…it was the wrong type or dosage or something…" Jason's voice reverberated through his skull and Spinelli put his hands up to his ears in an effort to block it out but it was a useless gesture for the sound was trapped within his mind.

Suddenly he stopped swaying back and forth, he reached up and dashed his tears away, it couldn't be, it simply couldn't…He assumed that Jason knew about the medication that night when he came to tell him of Maxie's heart attack because Lulu told him. She was in Manhattan with Kate and Maxie, she observed the paramedics' futile attempts to resuscitate Maxie. Spinelli thought they must have asked for her medications and found the pill container she always carried with her and determined the error then and there.

That isn't what happened though, it wasn't until days later that the coroner issued his autopsy report which stated that she died of a heart attack induced by high blood pressure. The medication she took to prevent rejection of her heart had undesired side effects one of which was an increase in blood pressure. So, she was prescribed additional drugs to counteract the elevation. Yet, the actual pills which were in Maxie's possession weren't the right type and so she died. The official verdict was accidental death. The pharmacy the drugs had come from was cited for negligence though they claimed their records showed they had dispensed the correct medication during Maxie's last refill.

Spinelli remembered the day the coroner's report was released, Lulu showed up at the penthouse in tears. She told him how Mac came to the apartment she and Maxie had shared. He was drunk and as he stood there weaving in her doorway, refusing all her efforts to get him to come in and sit down before he fell down, he told her about the findings. "She died because of a fucking, incompetent pharmacy tech who couldn't read the writing on a prescription and made the decision to go ahead and fill her prescription with what he thought it was instead of checking with the doctor or the pharmacist." His voice was full of bewildered rage as he contemplated the tragic loss of the second of his two daughters. "Maxie died because someone put the wrong kind of little pink pills in a bottle. She's dead…" Lulu called Robin to come get Mac who by then was huddled on the floor of the hallway, crying. Then she, in her turn, had run to Spinelli to take or offer comfort, probably both really.

Spinelli had absorbed her words, felt the growth of loathing swell in him as he learned why Maximista had died, how unnecessary it had all been. He and Mac had one thing in common, they both adored Maxie and they were equally devastated by her pointless, untimely death. Jason came in just as Lulu was leaving and he could tell that something momentous and shocking had happened to Spinelli. When the hacker told him the coroner's findings, his face hardened but his voice was even as he attempted to soothe his roommate, to try and get him to eat something or to sleep.

Now, in the bleak emptiness of the alley where Sam had died, Spinelli realized that the only possible way in which Jason could have known about the problems with the medication so quickly after Maxie's death was if he was the one responsible for exchanging the pills in the first place.

His hands tugged ruthlessly at his hair and he understood why people in paroxysms of grief rent their clothing and pulled out their hair. The only way to relieve this spiraling black hole of intense grief which threatened to crush him was to hurt physically, better perhaps simply to die. His eyes were swollen from crying, his throat hoarse from the piercing sobs he emitted as he keened his grief to the vast, uncaring, night sky.

Finally, exhausted, he could cry no more. He sat hunched over, a mute figure betrayed and lost. He was swamped by guilt and grief and the awful sense of having been entirely blind. Maxie, Sam and was that all? His mind skittered away from the repulsive thought, those two deaths alone placed him directly in unmitigated hell. If there were even more how could he possibly exist with the culpability of all that loss on his conscience? He was finding it impossible to continue to ignore the interior voice of suspicion which he had managed to successfully squelch for months now. Here at this instant, in this alley, there was only him and his stained soul. There was no television, no i-pod to distract him and prevent him from thinking too much. He didn't have to assuage Jason's concern by pretending to eat and sleep and feel better. No, here it was just him and the wraithlike spirits swirling through the night air, caressing him with ethereal fingers as they called his name, demanding that he finally concede his responsibility in their deaths.

"Lulu!" The word was a ragged croak from his parched and inflamed throat. Her death was the first he wondered about. He incessantly pondered the coincidence of Jason being at the Metro Court the night the elevator cables severed plunging her to a terrifying death. It was time that he acknowledged it, at least to himself. "Stone Cold killed them all-Maximista, Fair Lulu and Samantha." It was a stark statement and he knew it to be both factual and improvable.

He sat there staring unseeingly across the alley, his inner eye full of images of the people he had loved and lost. Why had Jason done this? That was the unbelievable part. Jason Morgan was a killer. Spinelli had always known it, accepted it as an abstract theorem with a few intrusive moments of reality making their way into his everyday world. For instance, there was the time he had almost shot Trevor Lansing at the penthouse and he would have if Spinelli hadn't intervened. Still, Jason only killed the guilty, the heinous ones, so that he could make the world a safer and better place for the people he loved and cared about. He never harmed innocents, that was his code and it was the single reason why Spinelli could manage to exist in the gray, compromise ridden surroundings which comprised his mentor's sphere of influence.

Spinelli knew this to be a fundamental truth about Jason's honor. So why and when had all that changed? Georgie…it couldn't be. He felt as though his heart was gradually metamorphosing into a piece of dull, lifeless stone. He didn't know if he could survive another revelation, especially not about such a beautiful girl who was so entirely pure. Yet, he had always been puzzled by that particular killing of Diego's. It was the one out of all of them which was counter intuitive. If there was a single person on the planet who had been kind and good and giving to Diego Alcazar-it was Georgie Jones. He didn't need to kill her. After all, if he had seen it was she and not her sister Maxie standing on the park steps, he could merely have melted away into the concealing darkness.

Spinelli could never forget that day. He recalled Stone Cold telling him how he believed Georgie Jones liked him-Damian Spinelli-the Jackal. He was shocked, dazed, disbelieving of the revelation until he began to feel the tiniest stirrings of hope. He planned to seek her out, to test the theory his mentor had proposed. That is until he stumbled across her cold lifeless body in the park and his world suddenly shattered. Jason had picked up the pieces back then as well. He was gentle with Spinelli, protecting him from the intrusions of the police investigation while also supporting him through his dark hours of loss as he grappled with his merciless self flagellation at being only moments too late to save her. He discovered Stone Cold was correct about Georgie's feelings for him. The police found unsent e-mails on her computer. They described her feelings toward him and Spinelli cursed himself for his perennial insensibility to her subtle signals and gestures of romantic interest.

"If Sweet Georgie was the first," Spinelli had switched to analytical mode but his brain was rusty, it hadn't been called upon to do much cognition recently. "Why was there such a time delay until the next…death?" He was a coward, he knew it, but he couldn't bring himself to use a fraught word like murder. "Because…" his mind was picking up the threads, making sense of them as a picture began to form of the pattern involved. "After Georgie's death," he mused to himself, "The Jackal was mostly solitary, he dallied but briefly with Nurse Nadine and though he lost his heart to the charms of the fair Maximista, the reciprocal was not true." He banged his head against the wall in frustrated anguish, welcoming the pain it caused. "If she had only stayed aloof, she would yet be a warm and luminous presence on this earth."

It was all clear to him now. Jason killed them when they became too emotionally close to Spinelli. For some reason he was threatened when others cared for him and the pathology was escalating. Georgie's death had been nearly two years ago. Maxie and Lulu had perished in the last six months and Sam just this evening. Jason had also been gradually isolating Spinelli from the outer world all the while he was making overtures of a physical nature. Spinelli was ensnared in a trap of Jason's devising and like all the best traps he had been entirely unaware of its existence until it was sprung.

Galvanized by his realizations, he shot up off the hard, cold ground. "The Jackal must flee!" The words were frantic and panic stricken.

He looked around the alley wide-eyed as though expecting Jason to leap out of the shadows at any moment. Spinelli ran for the entrance to the alley and when he reached the street he turned in the opposite direction from which he had previously come. He kept running, the adrenalin in his system propelled him forward until an unseen crack in the sidewalk caught the toe of his shoe and he only avoided crashing to the ground by managing to grab onto the railing of a nearby brownstone.

Spinelli swung himself down on the steps, clutching at the ornamental wrought iron as though it was a lifeline, his sole connection to reality and sanity. He sat there panting, his mind racing as he considered his unthinking, terror catalyzed flight. "I can't do it," he wiped his running nose on the sleeve of his jacket, "I have no money, the Jackal is without his cyber companion and he can not disappear without appropriate resources. Stone Cold would surely follow his grasshopper and he is unhinged, liable to harm those who unknowingly provide aid and succor for the Jackal in his flight."

He stood up, his legs were trembling with a combination of fatigue and stress. He looked around the street, amazed to see it was just an ordinary city street locked in its late night somnolence. The only visible signs of life were the moths fluttering in vain around the beguiling light halos of the streetlamps. Everything that transpired tonight, all he had unwillingly learned and begrudgingly accepted as the truth, it was all so momentous and life altering to Spinelli. Yet, here on this street lined on either side with venerable brownstones, there was no acknowledgment of his predicament, no caring hand or heart on offer. There was nothing but the dead silence of unconscious indifference. Never before had he so entirely understood how insignificant an individual's life and death concerns could be when measured against the larger scheme of things.

"There is no recourse for the Jackal, no help to be found," he whispered to himself in resigned recognition. "Whatever shall be done in the future, whatever path is to be chosen, it shall be a solitary one. The Jackal has but one ironclad resolution from this moment on and that is no one else's life shall be placed in peril simply because they are acquainted with him. It is my solemn vow." His words died away unheard, carried off into the night by a light wind which caused him to shiver as it brought a subtle reminder that summer was waning.

Wearily, his shoulders slumped and his feet dragging, he walked down the steps and headed back in the direction from which just moments ago he had been recklessly fleeing. Now his only concern, his fervent hope was to make it back into the penthouse without his absence being detected by Jason.

He was in luck. Spinelli breathed a soft sigh of relief as he soundlessly cracked open the front door to his shared residence, there was no looming figure with a disapproving face carved from granite awaiting his return from an unsanctioned late night excursion. It meant he would escape having to parry awkward questions that he wasn't emotionally capable of answering just yet. If he were really fortunate, he might never have to answer them simply because the need wouldn't arise.

He was suddenly totally and entirely exhausted. His system crashed as the adrenalin which had enabled him to function throughout the night's horrific discoveries evaporated leaving him shaking like a leaf. His eyelids drooped and he desperately craved oblivion. He hung the jacket he had been wearing in the closet, careful to put it deep into the interior where it couldn't easily be seen. It along with his pants and shoes were filthy, the result of contact with the walls and road surface of the alley. They would be dead giveaways to Jason's observant eye that Spinelli had been out when he was supposed to be sleeping. He took his shoes off and tucked them far under the couch, he would retrieve them at some point when Jason was gone. Then he slipped out of the sleep pants and put them back on inside out. Finally, he went into the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator drained it in a few large gulps.

Spinelli hadn't turned a light on since he had been back in the penthouse. Now he stepped out of the kitchen and peered up at the darkened stairs as an atavistic shudder of fear and repulsion coursed through him. No matter how suspicious it might appear in the morning, there was absolutely no way on earth he was capable of climbing back into bed with the man who had systematically murdered four of the most vital people in his life. Tomorrow would be soon enough to resume his mask of complicit ignorance but for the next few hours he would remain alone as he attempted to absorb all of the ramifications of what he had learned tonight.

Reviews are always appreciated


	3. Purgatory

Author's Note: I have no rights over the characters of General Hospital

Purgatory

Spinelli flung his hand up over his eyes in a vain attempt to shield them from the bright light streaming in through the windows by the pool table. It was too late, he was awake now. His eyes flew open. and he sat up, disoriented to find himself on the couch. Jason was sitting in the armchair nearest him, his hands were steepled under his chin and he stared unblinkingly at Spinelli, his eyes hooded and his expression inscrutable.

"Stone Cold," Spinelli said, his voice shaky as images from the previous evening flooded his brain and he recalled everything he had done and seen.

He found that even in the daylight, after one of the best nights of sleep he had experienced in recent memory, more than likely due to total and complete exhaustion, he still fervently believed in each and every conclusion he had attained the night before. Yet, as he peered cautiously at his roommate, it was simply impossible to find it within him to fear Jason. He was actually strangely glad that he chose to return home rather than attempting to go on the run. Even after everything Jason had done to those poor unsuspecting women, to Spinelli, to his very own soul-Spinelli couldn't have left him to his unbearable loneliness, he just couldn't, appropriate punishment though it might be.

"Why did you sleep down here?' The question was vintage Jason, blunt and to the point. Still, Spinelli knew him well enough to see the concealed hurt in the shadowed depths of his eyes.

He bent his head, feeling reproved for his actions. "The Jackal couldn't sleep. I…came down here to get a drink." The empty water bottle sat innocently on the coffee table providing mute testimony to the truth of his statement all the while glossing over the time differential between his journey downstairs and when he actually opened the refrigerator to retrieve the bottle. "Then I was too keyed up and didn't want to wake you. You needed to sleep and so I watched TV and just decided to sleep down here." He looked guilelessly at his mentor. Spinelli knew he could never hope to match Jason's skill at prevarication but he hoped the underlying truth to his tale would provide enough veracity so that the human lie detector sitting so near and staring at him so unnervingly wouldn't detect any discrepancy.

Jason just continued to look at him for another minute or so while Spinelli shifted unsteadily underneath his gaze. "Okay," he finally said as though he had looked at his roommate's response from every conceivable angle and had determined he was telling the truth. "Look," he was speaking as he rose from the chair and headed toward the kitchen, "Come on and get something to eat. I have to go give my formal statement down at the police station. Then I thought I should talk to Alexis and tell her what happened since I was the last person to see Sam alive."

Spinelli had obediently followed Jason into the kitchen only half listening to him as he was occupied with his own thoughts. Stunned, he looked up at his mentor in disbelief as he spoke so casually about going to see the bereaved mother of his ex-lover for whose death he was directly responsible. The pure audacity of the idea took his breath away. Yet, he was even more disturbed by Jason's countenance, by the lines of strain and fatigue deeply etched around his mouth and eyes. He emanated grief and sincerity and for a wild hope filled moment, Spinelli thought all his conclusions, his sureties from the night before were simply foolish conjectures. Then his shoulders slumped as he was once again swamped by all his memories, the evidence that while not legally bonding had convinced him that he was indeed right.

He didn't know what type of game Jason might be playing or even if it were a game. Spinelli still couldn't fathom how he might have been so mistaken in his intrinsic faith in his mentor, his friend for all these years. Perhaps the reasons for his odious actions were so complex that they were beyond Jason's own ken. Spinelli only knew that now wasn't the time for him to analyze the situation, he wasn't up to it either mentally or emotionally at the moment.

"You can come if you want," Jason made the offer casually but his eyes were sharp as he handed Spinelli a bowl of apple-cinnamon oatmeal. He hated the sticky, gooey stuff but Jason had been insisting he eat it lately. It was all part of his attempt to get Spinelli to gain back some of the weight he had lost over the past several months as his appetite declined in response to all the loss in his life.

Spinelli took the proffered bowl and sitting down in a high chair set against the kitchen counter began to eat unenthusiastically as he contemplated how he should reply to Jason's offer. It seemed as though these days even the simplest of conversations between the two them was a verbal minefield strewn with small munitions that could explode in his unwary face if he said the wrong thing or made the wrong choice.

"The Jackal respectfully declines Stone Cold's offer to accompany him." He finally responded diffidently. "It is just that he would feel intrusive seeing the distinguished District Attorney at such a private moment when she is sure to be distraught and overcome by grief. I do not have your excuse for invading her seclusion at such a time. Unlike you, I can bring her no commiserate news of her daughter's last moments on this earth." He looked up through his shaggy bangs, carefully scrutinizing Jason's face as he talked.

Jason looked thoughtful and he nodded his head in reluctant agreement. "Yeah, that makes sense. It's going to be hard to do this though…it would have been nice to have your company, your support." He sounded almost wistful as he did something almost unprecedented in Spinelli's years of association with him and confessed to needing another person's presence as he undertook an action.

Two days after Jason left to give what consolation he could to Alexis Davis, he and Spinelli were at the District Attorney's lakeside house for the memorial service. Sam was cremated and the urn containing her ashes sat over the fireplace. Not surprisingly, that area of the room stayed fairly vacant. People were uncomfortable with the idea that the remains of the person they were there to commemorate were actually in the room with them. Spinelli found himself moving against the general flow in the room as he stood alone by the mantel contemplating his memories of Sam and by extension those of Maxie, Lulu and Georgie. He was responsible for this outcome, for this mournful occasion and there was absolutely no way for him to abrogate his accountability. If those four women hadn't known him they wouldn't be dead, it was a simple case of cause and effect.

So, now at his third memorial service in a little over six months, he found his honest grief to be intertwined with an insidious sense of complicit guilt and the sum effect of those two emotions created a new level of miserable depression which was more debilitating than anything he had yet felt. His limbs were leaden and his mind longed endlessly for any opportunity which would allow him to sleep so that he could escape, albeit temporarily, from a world which no longer appealed to him as a place to dwell.

Spinelli turned listlessly away from the fireplace, searching the crowd for Jason. He wanted to find his mentor and persuade him to leave. He couldn't stand being at a place where Sam's family was grieving and all the while he had the disquieting knowledge of his culpability in creating their pain. Alexis's red rimmed eyes, Kristina's bouts of crying and Molly's bewildered air of incomprehension all belonged on his shoulders. He, Damian Spinelli, was here under false pretenses as was Jason. Alexis would demand they both leave if she had any inkling of their roles in her eldest daughter's death then she would press charges and prosecute the case herself.

They had no right to be here, it was entirely hypocritical and Spinelli couldn't stand it for another minute. He couldn't comprehend how Jason had possibly endured it for the two previous services never mind this particular time when the person who was dead was someone he had once loved dearly. He finally spotted his roommate across the room, his face was somber and his eyes sad as he spoke quietly with a subdued Diane Miller. For the first time since he had learned the appalling truth about what his friend had done he wondered if it weren't possible that he might somehow be exhibiting symptoms along the spectrum of psychotic or depersonalization mental disorders. Perhaps there were times when he wasn't himself that he was disoriented or paranoid or hallucinating and it was during those periods when he wasn't truly mentally competent that he had committed these awful acts. Any explanation due to biological or mental instability would go a long way toward alleviating the intolerable impact of Jason's monstrous actions in his roommate's eyes.

The service and the memorial gathering were full of people with whom Spinelli was by and large unfamiliar. It would seem that Fair Samantha's circle of acquaintances and friends were narrow indeed. If Maxie had been alive she would have been here. Yet, today, besides her immediate family and discounting Jason, Spinelli, and Lucky Spencer, most of the mourners appeared to be friends and colleagues of the District Attorney. The room was filled with local lawyers, politicians and other upper echelon representatives of the Port Charles police department. Commissioner Mac Scorpio was present convulsively clutching a glass of whiskey in his hand as he stood by himself in a corner. It was the first time that the hacker had seen him in since Maxie's service. Spinelli was distressed to note how his dark hair had become liberally streaked with gray in the months since his daughter's death and he appeared somehow shrunken with a defeated and hunched posture. There were so many ramifications from these deaths which Spinelli tended to forget in the innate selfishness of his own grief.

"Watch where you're going, freaky boy!" The irritated voice interrupted his reverie and Spinelli stumbled as he barely managed to prevent himself from colliding with a glowering Sonny Corinthos.

"Ful…some a...pol…ogies, Mister Sir," he stuttered out, "The Jac...kal should pay closer attention to his chosen pathway." He nervously flipped his bangs out of his eyes as he looked at the man who was one of Jason's oldest friends. He entirely disliked Spinelli for what he perceived as his untoward usurpation of his role in his mentor's life. "I would gladly change places with the Pacinoesque one if he but knew," Spinelli thought to himself bitterly.

"Yeah, you should," Sonny growled, his ire not lessened one whit. "You need to show respect, this is a memorial service not the local gaming arcade." He jabbed a sharp finger into Spinelli's chest to underline his point as he moved closer crowding the younger man and invading his space. Spinelli could feel the angry mobster's breath fanning across his cheek as he spoke.

"You are here out of esteem for the Goddess? For the child you made and lost?" Spinelli wasn't in the mood to be lectured, to have to tolerate one more instance of Sonny's derogatory attitude toward him. He thought he might be blunt as he reminded Sonny of the less than respectful treatment he had meted out to Sam when she was alive. It seemed he and Jason weren't the only hypocrites present this afternoon.

Sonny's eyes narrowed as he pondered what Spinelli had said. "Are you implying that I don't have a right to be here, freaky boy?" His voice was incredulous as he tried to determine if Spinelli was defying him. Sonny stepped even closer to Spinelli, invading his space as his black eyes sparked with anger.

For once Spinelli wasn't intimidated by Sony's naked aggression which he always seemed to exhibit whenever he encountered the hacker. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Jason was making his way across the crowded living room toward the two of them. It was clear from the set, hostile expression on his face he had seen Sonny's antagonistic attitude and was coming to extricate Spinelli from his unwanted attentions. There was a brief moment as Spinelli turned back to look at the rage stoked face only inches away from his own when he allowed himself to envision what might occur if he spurred Sonny on, if he induced him to go so far as to physically attack him. He knew it would be an easy goal to accomplish and then for once he could harness this dark energy emanating from Jason and apply it to the removal of someone who had caused him little but aggravation since his arrived in Port Charles.

'Why shouldn't I employ this accursed burden in such a manner as to rid myself of such as him?' He thought as he looked contemptuously back at Sonny.

He might as well have something to benefit him come out of this mess. Looking on the bright side, it certainly wouldn't require him attending another funeral for he would feel no sense of loss at the removal of such an unstable and egotistical individual. Someone who caused Spinelli untold misery and often prevented Jason from pursuing his own life goals in favor of being at Sonny's constant beck and call wouldn't be much missed. All it would require to unleash Jason's fury was for Spinelli to provoke Sonny into hitting him. He knew there was no longer any question of whom Jason would choose to defend-his protégé or his own onetime mentor. Jason had proven that he wanted Spinelli for himself and he had no doubt that included protecting him from anyone who dared to lay violent hands on him-even Sonny Corinthos. So, the mobster would shortly die and there would be no evidence as to the perpetrator. Then both Spinelli and the Port Charles police would breathe mutual sighs of relief as this particular thorn in their respective sides ceased to exist.

"Are you mocking me boy?" Sonny had sensed the change in Spinelli's demeanor and it spurred him to become even more enraged. "How dare a little punk like you behave like that toward me? Jason lets you get away with too much but don't mistake me for him…"

He moved impossibly closer, his chest heaving with his barely contained fury. Spinelli knew he was so close to the edge of performing a violent act that all he had to do was say something insolent or even merely wear an impertinent expression and he would know what it would feel like to have Sonny's fist come crashing into his face. In fact he thought he might relish the pain both as a relief from the all consuming numbness he currently felt combined with the masochistic pleasure of finally being punished for his inadvertent connivance in all these lamented and unnecessary deaths.

"Sonny!" The voice was firm yet mollifying. Unseen, Mike Corbin had walked up to the oblivious duo and had immediately seen the volatility of the scene expressed through the tensed and pugilistic postures of both men. He hadn't missed Jason's ever nearing presence either and stepped forward to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control. "This is neither the time nor the place for such behavior." He chided his adult son while he looked at Spinelli with puzzlement.

He didn't understand the kid. He knew Sonny didn't like him, actually seemed to hate him, but in every confrontation he ever witnessed between the two of the them, Spinelli had been the conciliatory party, always accepting Sonny's abuse with a bowed head as he tried to get away from his intimidating presence. That hadn't been the case today though. No, the young hacker had actually been going toe to toe with Sonny. It was as though he were intentionally waving a red flag in front of a furious bull, taunting him in order to get him to charge. Mike spared a brief glance in Jason's direction and seeing how close he was, tried to pull Sonny away from the spontaneous confrontation.

Hearing Mike's admonishment caused Spinelli to come crashing back to reality. He was shaking from a combination of shame and the aftermath of almost getting into a fist fight. He couldn't believe he had actually tried to infuriate Sonny further, to get him to hit him in order to give Jason a reason to go after him and more than likely to kill him outright. When had his moral compass become so skewed that he could take a tragic set of circumstances and try to utilize them as a method to resolve a personal vendetta? No matter how much Sonny may have tormented him over the years he didn't deserve to die for it and more importantly it wasn't Spinelli's call to determine who might live or die. Jason had already walked far enough down that irredeemable pathway for the both of them. His mind berated him for not observing the ethical difference between being the unwitting cause of the deaths of several people and the active instigator of one more fatality. Spinelli was beginning to think that Jason was psychologically damaged, perhaps he could no longer tell right from wrong, but he knew he was incapable of making any such specious claim on his own behalf.

"Everything all right here?" The question was bland enough but the overt menace in Jason's voice as he stood protectively next to Spinelli and sent a frosty stare directly at Sonny caused the older mobster to take a reflexive step back from his onetime friend and confidant.

Spinelli dry washed his face wearily as he responded in a subdued tone, all the fierceness of his recent attitude completely drained from him. "Yes, Stone Cold. The Jackal misspoke and inadvertently stoked Mister Sir's uncertain temper made more so by the sadness of this unlooked for day. He sincerely and humbly apologizes." He looked at the floor, he couldn't bear to meet the contempt that he knew would be so clearly expressed in Sonny's face or even worse the pity in Mike's.

"Sonny?" Jason's tone made it clear who he was holding responsible for the confrontation.

"Yeah, Jason. The kid has it right. I took something he said the wrong way and overreacted. I should apologize too." His tone was surprisingly contrite and Spinelli was astonished to see Sonny's outthrust hand find its way into his downward looking vision.

He looked up and met Sonny's eyes self-effacingly but was surprised to see that he appeared to be truly remorseful; there were no hidden depths of rancor or maliciousness evident in his gaze. More than ever he regretted his impulse, the cowardly but effective plan he had almost successfully put into motion.

"The Jackal was equally to blame. He should have made it clear that he was only speaking as to the fact that it was gratifying that Mister Sir recollected Fair Samantha on this day as there seem to be so few that have done the same." He extended his own hand and the two men performed an awkward handshake.

Mike was extremely happy that such a potentially fraught scenario ended in such an unexpectedly peaceful way. Jason still looked unsure as to what had actually occurred and whether or not he should be upset with Sonny but he knew when to let things go.

"Are you ready to go then?" He turned to Spinelli ignoring the other two men.

"Indeed, Stone Cold. There is nothing further that either of us can contribute to lighten the burden of Fair Samantha's family. It is meet we should pay our obeisances to the District Attorney and her daughters and then depart to leave them free to tend to their other guests." He nodded shyly at Sonny and Mike and turned to follow Jason who had already gone in search of Alexis in order to pay their respects one last time.

It had been three weeks since Sam's memorial service. Things at the penthouse had attained a newly established rhythm. Jason didn't actually prohibit his roommate from going out without him but Spinelli knew instinctively that he wouldn't like it. Jason wanted to know where he was at all times. The younger man was entirely resolved that he would have nothing but the most casual of interactions with people so as not to give his mentor any cause for believing that anyone was a threat to their relationship or that they might try to take Spinelli away from Jason. So, even when he was at Kelly's and Mike was friendly toward him, trying to engage him in conversation that he would have entered into freely and easily in happier, more carefree days, he was now careful to keep his responses solely to the matter at hand. He was scrupulously polite, as he retreated ever more behind the protective bulwark of his native shyness trying hard not to make any type of eye contact or to even inadvertently touch someone in anyway. He even attempted to avoid a brief brush of fingers as cash was exchanged or his purchase handed across to him.

He could see the hurt reflected in Mike's eyes as he wondered at the standoffishness of the young computer hacker. He probably thought he was being aloof because of the confrontation with Sonny at the Davis house. Spinelli couldn't help the offended perceptions of others. He far preferred carrying the weight of causing someone wounded feelings over the unbearable knowledge that he was the reason for the death of that selfsame individual.

Spinelli was slowly starting to think he had achieved his goal to make sure no one else was in danger because of him. At the moment things appeared to be in stasis between Jason and himself. There hadn't been a repeat of the night Sam died. Jason no longer came to his room and even without his presence, Spinelli was sleeping better. It was as though knowing the truth of what had happened, even lacking Jason's confirmation, was cathartic for him. Now that he knew the absolute worse that had happened, he didn't have to guess or wonder any longer. There was a strange peace in recognizing that your life was forever altered, destroyed really, but since he now was aware, he could make sure there would be no future victims to plague his conscience. As for himself, he could continue on in a haze of indifference remaining for the time being under Jason's obsessive thrall.

Then his artificial aura of tranquility was suddenly and peremptorily shattered by a knock on the door in the middle of the afternoon. Jason was out and the unanticipated noise was startlingly alien to Spinelli since visitors seldom came anymore to the penthouse. He froze in place, caught unawares walking in from the kitchen, unsure of how to respond. For a brief moment he considered just ignoring the undesired summons of the external world and pretending there was no one home. There would have been truth to the masquerade for he was beginning to feel more and more invisible as though he only ever really existed in Jason's presence.

"Mr. Grasshopper!" Diane Miller's authoritarian tone fractured the stagnant quiet of the penthouse. "I know you are in there and I will keep banging on this door until you let me in…Ouch!"

Spinelli rushed to the door when he heard her screech of pain. "Has the lady lawyer harmed herself?" He flung open the door with such force that the attorney took a surprised step back.

"Yes," she said assertively, quickly recovering her aplomb, as she stepped past a bemused Spinelli into the living room. "I broke a nail while pounding on your door." She offered the injured digit as proof of the judiciousness of her claim.

Diane's attention was distracted from the damage done to her usually impeccable grooming as she swiveled around taking in the appearance of the living room. It wasn't cluttered but there was an overall sense of neglect. Dust motes danced in the air and there were additional layers of dust on every flat surface. It was late afternoon and the sun was setting making the area appear even more forsaken and claustrophobic. She turned her attention to the room's single living resident and saw the same signs of abandonment echoed in his face. Spinelli was deathly pale and his eyes enormous in the dim light, the raccoon circles beneath them were more pronounced than she could ever before remember seeing them. He was painfully thin and there was a strained, defeated look about him that tugged at the strings of heart.

"How are you, Mr. Grasshopper?" She asked gently, as though in his fragility he might begin to crack before her very eyes.

Spinelli hadn't looked in a mirror in weeks but he could guess from the distressed expression on Diane's face, which she quickly but ineffectually attempted to conceal, that his physical appearance was outwardly manifesting the toil taken upon his inner spirit. "I am persevering," he replied gamely, the smallest twitch of his lips signifying his best attempt at a smile.

Diane crossed her left arm over her waist so as to support her right elbow in the palm of the left hand, she placed her free hand upon her left cheek and gazed seriously at him, her eyes filled with warm compassion. "I would beg to differ," she said with only a trace of her usual tartness. "I would venture to guess that you haven't been going out and about as you were wont to do…" She tilted her head as she let the sentence trail off waiting to see if he was going to deny her conclusion.

He just shrugged and she gradually realized as she waited for him to speak that he intended no further response. She couldn't absorb the idea of a silent Spinelli. His defining characteristic had always been his convoluted speech patterns often delivered at a rapid rate as though the words were crowding behind one another on his tongue and being impatiently pushed out by the others waiting in the long queue. She peered at him as best she could in the rapidly accruing gloom of the desolate room. Spinelli didn't turn away from her scrutiny but just stood there looking dazed and weary. An immense sadness welled up within Diane as she begin to think that his remarkable inner light which had once blazed so brightly through his eyes, his mannerisms and his general care for all things moral was substantially dimmed or perhaps, in an even more unthinkable outcome, permanently doused.

She reached over and taking his arm led him unresistingly to the couch. "Sit down," she said quietly turning on a lamp sitting on an adjacent end table. He complied without demur as though his own wants and desires were nonexistent and he was little more than a puppet obedient to the slightest twitch of his strings. "It's bad isn't it?" She asked without further preamble as she took a seat next to him and picked up his limp, cold hand and pressed it firmly between both of hers.

His hand lay quiescent in hers but his head jerked slightly as he tried to look away from her penetrating gaze. "The Brusque Lady of Justice shouldn't expend her valuable time worrying about the Jackal. He is as well as can be expected all things considered."

Diane was relieved he was at least talking to her but she was determined to prevent him from acting as though everything was fine when it was entirely evident that the opposite was true. "You can tell me absolutely anything, Mr. Grasshopper." She gave him a wry smile, "I would think our past conversations would have proven my reliability in this arena. No matter the difficulty, I will do all in my power that I can to help resolve it." Spinelli's head was bowed and he swallowed hard, his Adam's apple convulsing, his jaw muscle tensed as a single tear tracked down his cheek. Diane reached over and with the lightest of touches brushed it away. She leaned in, laying her own cheek against Spinelli's. "I can't stand seeing you like this," she whispered, her own eyes spontaneously filling with tears as she felt her heart aching for him. "Please let me in, let me do what I can to alleviate…this."

Diane held her breath, there wasn't a sound in the room except for the faint tympani of their respective hearts monotonously beating an incessant cadence proclaiming their fragile mortality. She knew he was at the tipping point of confiding whatever was afflicting him and if she added a single entreating syllable he might choose to shut down even further. She could only wait in uneasy silence as Spinelli decided if he was going to unburden himself to her or not. He turned his head towards her, his green eyes stormy with uncertainty as his lips parted but whatever he was going to say to Diane died unuttered as the door to the penthouse opened abruptly and Jason stepped inside. Immediately every aspect of Spinelli's demeanor altered, he guiltily averted his face from Diane's compassionate stare and pulled his hand out of her grasp with an urgency that both alarmed and startled her. Then he became so still that he might have been a lifelike sculpture placed for bizarre affect upon the living room sofa.

Diane looked across Spinelli at the obvious cause of his distress and, she admitted to herself uneasily, fear-Jason Morgan. Her eyes narrowed as she took in his overwhelming vitality, the way in which his presence seemed to charge the very particles of air in the penthouse. Instinctively she understood that the source of all of Spinelli's problems was standing ten feet away and glowering disapprovingly at her.

"Jason," she drawled, refusing to react to his obvious attempt to intimidate or discommode her, "I was just having a chat with Mr. Grasshopper here which your abrupt entrance has so rudely interrupted." Beside her she could see Spinelli's muscles contract as he cringed at her audacity in daring to further incite the enforcer's wrath.

"I live here, Diane. I get to come in without knocking." Jason said caustically. Still, somehow the fact that she was her usual abrasive self seemed to reduce Jason's threat response and he visibly relaxed the vigilance which had gripped him upon stepping through the doorway. "So, what were the two of you talking about?" He asked the question casually but Diane was a veteran of reading the body language of witnesses and opposing counsel and she didn't miss his sharpened gaze or the unconscious bending forward of his torso as he leaned in to hear her answer. Nor did she miss the slight shudder that coursed through Spinelli's body as he too recognized that his mentor had adopted a predatory stance, subtle though it was.

Diane wanted to reach over to Spinelli, to pat his hand reassuringly, to smile at him and let him know everything would be okay but she knew better. She understood that the dynamic between Jason and Spinelli had shifted radically from what it once had been. Previously the two of them had been a mismatched pair it was true but Spinelli was never afraid of Jason, no instead he adored him. Actually, it had always amused Diane how little Jason's temper, his impatience with the younger man had ever appeared to impact him. He would just let his angry remarks, his glares roll off his back. It was all because he had realized what everyone else could also plainly see. Jason cared just as much about Spinelli as his protégé did for him. It was an odd relationship but somehow it had always seemed right as though it were meant to be that two such misfits would find one another and that their antithetical skills and personalities would blend to form an unbreakable bond. Yet, now something about that connection was fractured, was distinctly off kilter and Diane was willing to bet that the blame for the change, the disruption lay squarely at Jason's door. Looking back and forth between the two roommates she clearly saw possession etched on Jason's face and complete and total submission contained within the rigid stillness of Spinelli's form.

Diane felt an upsurge of maternal protectiveness toward the wretched hacker as she determined to deflect Jason's disapproval away from Spinelli. She responded breezily, to his question, "Well, since Max has started going around with that vapid Assistant District Attorney-Lauren Anderson…"

"Louise Addison," the almost inaudible correction came from the man sitting besides her.

"Whatever, she is surely a viper by any other name and strikes as swiftly and venomously." She flapped her hand dismissively and for a moment a deep indentation appeared between her eyes as Diane temporarily forgot the purpose of her speech while contemplating her unexpected and despised rival. 'How could Max break my heart like this, the big lunk! Well, if he thought Diane Miller was down for the count, he was sadly mistaken,' she thought to herself with a renewal of her resolution to pry the legal harpy away from her man.

"Diane?" Jason was looking at her quizzically; he was waiting to hear the rest of the reason why she had stopped by to visit Spinelli.

"What?" she said, vaguely resentful at the interruption of her gloating revenge reverie. "Oh, yes," she was back in the here and now as she continued fabricating a plausible reason for why she had dropped by the penthouse uninvited. "So, tomorrow night is the annual Stone Cates HIV fundraising soiree at the Metro Court. As you know, it is a sparkling fusion of charity and couture. It is one of the high points of the Port Charles social season. I must attend but I can't endure an evening spent watching Max and that floozy making eyes at one another while Alexis and hang out at the bar making catty comments about how style challenged all the other women are. In shore, I require a date." She concluded her rant with a dramatic pause as she raised an elegant eyebrow and watched Jason's inscrutable face. She fervently hoped that her spur of the moment rationale for her visit had enough truth to it so that Jason would believe her.

"So," Jason spoke slowly, his voice low and disbelieving," You came to ask Spinelli to be your date for the fundraiser?" His eyes swiveled from Diane's face over to Spinelli's bowed head. The younger man didn't stir, didn't look up at his mentor. "What did he say?" He didn't spare a glance for Diane, his entire concentration was on his unresponsive roommate.

Diane swallowed, she was suddenly unsure. She didn't know whether it would be better to say that Spinelli agreed to go and that way manage to get him out of this hellhole of a home for at least one brief evening or that he refused and thereby avoid arousing Jason's unreasoning wrath. "Say something!" She told herself fiercely, unused to ever feeling indecisive.

Just as she was about to open her mouth and let unknown words tumble out another voice cut in, "Stone Cold, I graciously declined the benevolent lady of justice's request that I act as her escort to the function." Spinelli peered up at Diane through his bangs, his green eyes shining with fear as a small apologetic smile flashed across his face and was gone. He spoke quietly in a dull, defeated voice uninflected by any emotion.

Diane's heart broke as she comprehended how dispirited this previously bright and vibrant boy had become.

She looked over at Jason who was wearing a self satisfied expression which she longed to wipe off his face. He had done this, she knew it. He had broken Spinelli's rare spirit leaving only a shell of his former persona in its stead. This man languishing on the couch looked like Spinelli and he spoke like him but his inner essence, the flame which had burned so strongly was extinguished and she doubted it could ever be reignited.

"You heard him," Jason spoke flatly, his eyes flint-like and hard as he stared at Diane. "Spinelli doesn't want to go the fundraiser…with you." He added the last words in an insolent tone of voice with the slightest hint of a smile shadowing his lips.

Diane stared at Jason haughtily. "Yes, well I can appreciate that Mr. Grasshopper might not wish his reentry to society to be under the bright lights and prying scrutiny of such a soiree. Rest assured though I shall return to coax him into back into pursuing his prior interests and activities abandoned in the aftermath of all the tragedy which of late has so colored his life."

Now she and Jason locked glances, caught in a battle of wills over a much vaunted prize, the winning of Spinelli's loyalty, perhaps even his very soul. The object of their dispute gazed between the combatants and knew he was required-as was a lady of old-to bestow a token of regard upon the person chosen to be his champion. He didn't hesitate, he simply couldn't afford to, Diane's safety and possibly her life were at stake. He would gladly sacrifice each action of kindness, regard, and even plain manners that he would ordinarily feel compelled to observe in order to ensure the continuance of her existence.

Spinelli drew a deep breath and stood up from the couch. When he began to talk there wasn't the slightest hint of his inner turmoil evident in his voice. "The Jackal must endeavor to speak plainly so that there is no likelihood of error allowed in the Brusque Lady of Justice's interpretation of his words. While he appreciates, more than he can say, her varied offers of companionship and entertainment, he must unequivocally repudiate all such overtures either now or at a future date. The Jackal is entirely content to continue residing at Casa De Stone Cold under the watchful auspices of his mentor and would desire no substantive alteration in the arrangement."

"Mr. Grasshopper," Diane's eyes were wide with shock as she stared at him entreatingly. "Surely you cannot mean to severe all ties with those who care for you, would help you…with me?" Her voice was faltering and she sounded as though she were fighting to hold back tears.

Spinelli simply stared at her stoically as he ignored his inner voices which clamored for him to rush to Diane and grabbing her hand flee with her away from the stultifying penthouse and its stark representation of the eternal loss of hope. Yet, it wouldn't be his life which would be forfeit should he do such a thing but Diane's instead and because of that fact he knew there was no alternative but to push her away for her own safety.

Jason looked inimically at the lawyer, his eyes glittering with some undefined emotion. Diane stared back at him with loathing. She couldn't believe that she used to think that Jason Morgan was fundamentally a good man who through an uncontrollable set of circumstances had set upon a life path in opposition to his truest self. Now all she could see was a monster intent upon isolating and caging a beautiful and unique spirit and all this destruction was being performed in the name of friendship or perhaps something much more oblique and sinister.

She walked over to Spinelli and raising her hand caressed his cheek. She gave him a sad smile, her hazel eyes connecting with his moss green ones. "I'm available for you Mr. Grasshopper at any hour of the day or night. Just call me and I'll be here." She reached up and smoothed his bangs-grown longer than ever-back from his pale brow. "You are cherished, never forget it."

Spinelli allowed himself to luxuriate in her touch, in her love for a brief moment before recalling himself and even more importantly their silent audience of one. He knew he still had a last portion of the undeclared but all important examination he was undergoing to complete. Without looking at Jason, he began the final act in his attempt to make sure that Diane Miller walked out of the penthouse without becoming a marked woman. Resolutely he stepped away from her still upraised hand and looked at her impassively. "Stone Cold is home now and it would behoove all outsiders to vacate the premises. He…we prefer to dwell in solitude."

Diane just gazed at him for a moment, her eyes full of a compassionate sadness. Finally, she nodded her head in resignation and turned toward the door which Jason held open in anticipation of her departure. She paused by him when her hand, as though acting of its own volition, flashed out and struck him across the cheek. The slap was so forceful and unexpected that Jason's head rocked back. An audible gasp of shock arose from Spinelli as he saw all his attempts at protecting her crumble into dust. She glared at Jason silently demanding a response but he stood there with her handprint reddening his face saying nothing.

She hissed one final word, "Coward!" and stalked out of the penthouse.

Reviews are always appreciated


	4. Rebuke

Author's Note: I have no rights over the characters of General Hospital.

Also, thanks are extended to Dark Orange Cat who both helped me find a thematic thread for my chapter titles as well as actually coming up with three of the titles themselves. Couldn't have done this entire undertaking without your support and ready ear. ;-)

Confrontation

Jason gave vent to his repressed fury by slamming the door so hard a picture dropped from the wall shattering its glass covering. "Bitch!" He growled, and for the first and last time Diane Miller caused a break in the composure in her erstwhile employer that went far beyond the bemused exasperation he would formerly exhibit around her.

Spinelli knew the rift between them was irreversible and for that he would rejoice if he only now could make sure that Jason would not pursue Diane in any further more definitively terminal sense. He stood uncertainly in the center of the living room not sure what the best course of action might be. Jason was still standing by the door, his fists clenching and unclenching as he fought to control his rage.

"Stone Cold?" His voice was soft and tentative, a tendril of query snaking out to check the atmosphere and see if it was prudent to speak.

Jason looked over at him as though just realizing he wasn't alone in the penthouse, "What?"

The single word was abrupt and it was hard for Spinelli to accurately gauge his mood by it but he felt compelled to speak, to try and control the damage Diane had caused. "You know full well that I wouldn't attend that charitable function with Ms. Miller or for that matter do anything recreational in her company."

"Do I?" The words were deceptively gentle and Jason was now staring intently at Spinelli as though trying to read his mind, to ascertain his true thoughts. "If you want to go tomorrow night with Diane you should."

Spinelli didn't change a single aspect of his countenance, he made sure that not a muscle of his face twitched as he heard Jason's casual response. It was a trap, for him and for Diane and he would not be ensnared within it. "No, the Jackal desires no one's company but yours." He hesitated, noting the slight smile which flitted across Jason's face. It appeared he was managing to negotiate this emotionally fraught situation with some success. Maybe he was beginning to learn the rules of a game he had never volunteered to play but the stakes were too high to turn back now. "As a matter of fact, I wished to speak to you about something pertaining to that very topic."

"Oh?" Jason had fully relaxed and as he moved closer to Spinelli he raised his hand placing it on his roommate's cheek, stroking it in a manner which mimicked what Diane had done just a short time ago. "What did you want to talk about?" His eyelids drooped, partially eclipsing the crystalline blue of his eyes and his voice was throaty.

Spinelli was nervous, he hadn't realized that Jason would so quickly move back into a physical approach but he forged ahead. "Yes, Jason, I…I think we ought to take a trip, get away from Port Charles. I am suffocating here. Things would be so much better for you, for me-if we could just concentrate on us without worrying about outside interruptions or interference. Most of the people I care about have…are gone. It would be small hardship for the Jackal to bid adieu to a place which possesses such poignant and tragic personal connotations."

Jason stopped the caressing motion of his hand. Slipping it down further he tilted Spinelli's chin up so he could look directly into the younger man's eyes. Spinelli fought to quell the incipient nausea roiling his stomach and attempted to meet Jason's penetrating gaze with a guileless one of his own. "Do you mean it? You really want to leave, to go on a trip just the two of us?"

Jason's voice possessed a naked eagerness and longing which produced a strangely mixed sensation of pity, despair and compassion within Spinelli. He knew he had every right, perhaps even an obligation, to hate Jason but he was incapable of doing so. Their connection was warped beyond recognition but it wasn't broken. He still cared about this man who had ruined his life and killed innocents. He would bear the responsibility of what type of depraved person that made him as it appeared he was spitting on the memories of those whose only sin was to love or care for him. No matter what though, he could neither betray nor forsake Jason. Somehow he still owed him fealty, his honest allegiance and buried deep within the recesses of his ethos he yet bore him love albeit of a twisted and tainted nature.

"Assuredly, the Jackal would desire decamping from our environs above all else, at the earliest convenience practicable."

"Where do you want to go?" Now Jason's thumb was brushing against Spinelli's lower lip and he looked hungrily at his mouth but went no further than the soft, repetitive motion that was oddly soothing to the hacker.

It was the strangest sensation. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, Jason's thumb moved in synchronicity with the words, almost but not quite invading the buccal cavity. "I have no preference, Stone Cold is free to pick the destination with the sole stipulation that it be far from here."

Jason pulled back his hand and his eyes grew dreamy looking as he picked up Spinelli's unresisting right hand and bringing it to his lips kissed it gently. Holding Spinelli's hand he looked at his face, his gaze soft with love, regarding Spinelli in a way he had never before encountered. It took his breath away. "Europe then," he said with decided authority and a crooked grin. "You can drag me around to every ancient monument, every famous scientist's and playwright's tomb so long as I get to stop at the occasional pub for some beer. Spending everyday and night with you, with no one else around, that's all I need as long as you are happy."

'Happiness!' Spinelli thought to himself with a bitter taste in his mouth. 'That is an attainment beyond my comprehension. I would be well content with the ability to sleep undisturbed, to keep innocence out of harm's way and Stone Cold free from the clutches of the law.' Out loud he said, "Indeed, the Jackal has long dreamed of an opportunity to visit the historic byways of England and the Continent. Stone Cold is beyond kind to consider his desires in the matter. Should I then proceed to make haste in creating an itinerary and obtaining the necessary travel documents?"

"The sooner the better," Jason said and for the first time in a long while the two men were in perfect accord. A shadow passed across his face as a thought struck him, "I have to go the fundraiser at the Metro Court tomorrow night. I promised Robin I would…" He paused and looked speculatively at Spinelli. "You could come if you wanted," he said diffidently.

Spinelli could think of nothing which appealed to him less and his mind raced as he thought how to couch his refusal in terms that wouldn't arouse either Jason's suspicion or his displeasure. "The Jackal would indeed enjoy an evening spent in Stone Cold's company but not in front of the prying and disapproving eyes of the highest stratum of Port Charles society. After all, it is entirely because we wish to avoid such intrusiveness that we are embarking upon our journey. It would be a far better use of my time to spend it arranging for our travel plans so that we can leave in a timely fashion, perhaps even the following day." He looked at Jason inquiringly hoping his response was appropriately balanced between regret and practicality.

Jason nodded his head as though he had come to the same conclusion. "Yeah, you're right this town is full of people that have nothing better to do then to get into other people's business. I'll try not to be late coming home and then on Sunday we can get an early start." He reached for Spinelli's face and pulling it close to his own delicately brushed his lips across the younger man's mouth. "Then you'll be mine, all mine," he murmured as he released him.

Tonight Spinelli sat on the couch restless and feverish with anticipation. In a few short hours he would be away from Port Charles, away from the phantoms that ceaselessly haunted him and from the crushing fear of someone else he cared about being injured or killed. When they finally managed to put a great distance between them and this city, he would ensure that they became a world unto themselves with only the most necessary and impersonal transactions taking place between them and other people. Such intentional isolation would suit them both. Jason could be assured that he was finally and totally in possession of Spinelli's body if not fully his mind. Most importantly, Spinelli's endless worry that Jason would feel threatened and strike out physically at some unsuspecting person would abate though he knew it would never be entirely possible to relax his vigilance, to discontinue the need to keep watch.

Spinelli hadn't slept at all the night before as he waited through all the hours of darkness for Jason to noiselessly enter his room and once more occupy his bed. Yet, he had never materialized and the hacker spent the day in a familiar sleep deprived daze as he somehow managed to make travel plans for Jason and himself to quit Port Charles on the morrow.

Jason had left for the gala hours ago, looking handsome and unapproachable in a midnight blue suit. Spinelli spent the evening on the sofa reviewing the events which led to him leaving for Europe the following day. Once they embarked upon their peregrinations it was his intention to somehow convince Jason never to return. There was nothing but loss, heartache and grief remaining in Port Charles for him. Together they would forge some semblance of a life in a new place, maybe on a Greek island surrounded by azure blue water and sky and pristine white houses. In such a place there might be some vague hope of redemption for both of them and if not at the very least others-strangers or friends-would be safe from Jason's unbalanced and deadly paranoia.

Spinelli finally gave in to his body's imperative for rest and he lay on the sofa dozing fitfully, coming in and out of consciousness with sudden spasmodic jerks of his body as he looked wildly around the empty, desolate room for some indication of what had disturbed his attempts at slumber. The third time it occurred he glanced over at the muted television screen noticing that there was a breaking news alert intruding on the late night science fiction movie he had been desultorily watching prior to falling asleep. He looked blearily at the screen, there was something tugging at his mind, it was the familiarity of the backdrop. Spinelli realized the television reporter was standing in front of the Metro Court Hotel where tonight's fundraiser was taking place.

Animated by sudden dread, Spinelli sat upright no longer in the least bit sleepy as he searched frenetically under the couch cushions for the television remote. He found it and quickly released the mute.

"Stories are starting to spread that the Metro Court Hotel is a cursed building." The reporter was a petite brunette in her mid-thirties, she looked earnestly into the camera as she spoke. "This building was erected on the site of the old Port Charles Hotel, a local landmark which burned to the ground several years ago. In 2007, there was a hostage situation in the new hotel that resulted in several deaths. Additionally, explosive devices were detonated which required the hotel to be closed for several months while it was repaired. Then approximately two months ago, a young woman, who worked in the hotel for the fashion magazine Crimson, plunged to her death when the cables on the elevator car she was in gave way. All these past events combined with tonight's tragedy would seem to almost give credence to the idea that there is indeed a malignant force at work in the Metro Court Hotel."

"Cynthia," the screen had split into two panels with the reporter to the right and the anchorman back in the studio to the left. "As I understand it though, there are no suspicions that this was anything other than an accidental death is that correct?"

Spinelli held his breath, a death! "Whose death, whose death?" He was yelling at the unresponsive screen, desperate to know who had died tonight.

"That's correct, Bob," the reporter replied. "It is thought to be the ultimate case of a wardrobe malfunction but no one except the manufacturer of the shoes is thought to be culpable in Ms. Miller's demise."

"No!" It burst out of Spinelli's throat more as a tormented sob than a word. Spontaneous tears of grief and rage coursed down his cheeks as he clutched his heaving stomach in agony. "The Jackal failed her, he failed her!"

"For those of you just joining us," now the whole screen was occupied by the anchorman as he gazed soberly out at his invisible audience, "There is late breaking news coming in from the annual Stone Cates HIV fundraiser. What is usually a festive night dedicated to charitable fundraising has turned into the scene of a terrible accident. Diane Miller, a prominent Port Charles attorney, plunged to her death from the verandah of the restaurant high atop the Metro Court Hotel. It appears the heel of one of her shoes became entangled in the long skirt of her evening dress. She lost her balance and tumbled over the railing of the outdoor portion of the restaurant. At one time or another Ms. Miller was the attorney for both Sonny Corinthos and his partner Jason Morgan. These two men are local power brokers in Port Charles. Their official business is stated to be that of exporters of South American coffee beans. However, over the past several years, both Sonny Corinthos and more especially, Jason Morgan, have been arrested numerous times. In 2007, Mr. Morgan was acquitted of murder charges concerning the death of another entrepreneurial businessman with South American ties-Lorenzo Alcazar. Mr. Morgan was exonerated after a successfully vigorous defense was mounted by Ms. Miller on his behalf. Just a moment…it appears that Cynthia is standing by with Port Charles District Attorney, Alexis Davis."

Now the camera shifted to show Alexis Davis standing inside the lobby of the hotel with the television reporter. "Ms. Davis, tonight's tragedy must be particularly difficult for you to grasp. You and Ms. Miller were more than colleagues. I understand there was a personal dimension to your relationship as well." She shifted the microphone so that it was closer to Alexis' face, there was a pause as the District Attorney collected herself.

Alexis looked wan and tired, there were dark circles under her eyes that Spinelli recognized as the twin of his own. Her face was strained and deep furrows of grief and sadness cut across her brow. Her eyes were red rimmed and defeated looking and for a moment it seemed that she might not be able to compose herself in order to answer the question. Then her spine straightened and her chin jutted forward as she leaned forward to speak assertively into the microphone held before her. Her iron will forged through all those years of self discipline and control came to the fore and rescued her now in this most dire of circumstances. Spinelli felt a flash of kinship for the beleaguered lawyer. She might be the lone person in Port Charles who could truly appreciate his own grief, his own sense of futility and loss. After all, she had lost her child which was designated to be the most unendurable life event imaginable. Parents were supposed to predecease their offspring not the other way around. Now, tonight, she had to face a further terrible blow due to the death of a dear and valued friend. Instead of finding private solace with friends and family, she was forced to face the full glare of invasive media speculation since the death had occurred at a high profile social event with the crème de la crème of Port Charles society attending, one of whom was Alexis herself.

"Yes, um," Alexis paused, for a second she looked exactly as dazed and lost as she felt, showing every one of her middle aged years. Then with a supreme effort of will, she banished her incipient tears with an impatient flick of her finger and forged on, "Diane Miller was an excellent litigator, we faced each other often in court and it was always anyone's guess who would be successful. She was as fiercely competitive in the courtroom as she was loyal outside of it. I will miss her terribly. I have lost a friend and the law has lost a great advocate."

The reporter waited for a moment to see if the District Attorney was going to add anything further to her statement but when it became clear nothing more would be forthcoming she spoke, "Thank you for speaking with us Ms. Davis, our sincere condolences on your loss this evening as well as on the recent passing of your daughter Samantha McCall." She turned away from a stricken looking Alexis, Spinelli's heart bled for her as she seemed to crumple in front of the camera at the unexpected reference to Sam's death. Entirely oblivious to the emotional turmoil she had created, the woman talked blithely to the camera, "This is Cynthia Morris coming to you from the Metro Court Hotel, site this evening of the bizarre death of Diane Miller. Ms. Miller's death is only the latest in a series of such incidents which have plagued the citizens of Port Charles over these past months. We will keep you updated as further details are released."

Spinelli spent the next half hour skipping from one local affiliate to another. He grew impatient with the repetitive nature of the reports and only paused in his incessant channel hopping when he caught a glimpse of something new.

At one point Carly was on the screen looking distressed and shaken, "Absolutely not! There is no curse on the Metro Court. There has simply been a series of unfortunate events over the past several months. I lost a friend tonight and a family member last July. These are not abstract occurrences to me and to the people here tonight but real flesh and blood people who have been taken before their time. Shame on you for using this tragedy as more fodder for the endless cycle of media rumor mongering and half baked theories which if you ask me is a pretty poor way to earn a living!" Spinelli was glad to see her innate fire wasn't irrevocably dampened by what had happened to Lulu or even to Diane who was someone that Carly actually seemed to respect and maybe even grudgingly like. Her honest expression of anger and emotion was refreshing and somehow he thought would be applauded by Diane herself.

He caught sight of a distraught looking Max in the background of one of the scenes. He was raising his hand in an ineffectual gesture to shield himself from the lights and cameras and as they ignored his unspoken plea to be left alone Spinelli felt himself grow angry on his behalf. He knew well what it was to grieve for someone you had loved, someone who had owned your heart it was a shattering experience and for all that raw, unprocessed grief to be publicly exposed must be exceedingly torturous. Max was rescued by the blonde virago who was Carly truly channeling her inner Valkyrie as she came up and shoved her hand into the camera lens. It was the last that Spinelli or any other viewer saw of the chaotic scene at the Metro Court on that particular channel.

Spinelli continued to sit slumped on the couch as he randomly shuffled through channels seeing if he could glean anymore information about Diane's death. He felt numb as though he was no longer made of flesh and blood but merely some type of automaton who could see and hear but not think or feel. He had betrayed Diane and it was worse this time, far worse than what had happened to Georgie, Lulu, Sam or even Maxie. He might indeed have loved them better, been more strongly bonded to them. Yet, when they died he hadn't known of Jason's tendencies, his homicidal impulses and so his grief for them was a purer thing, unblemished by the knowledge that he might have prevented their deaths. However, he had forfeited the luxury of pleading ignorance in this particular case.

Just yesterday he had feared, particularly after Diane struck Jason, that the lawyer was at risk and it was in his power, his sole purview to have prevented tonight's tragedy. He could have gone to the police and implicated Jason, no matter that it would have cost his mentor his freedom and himself his sanity or possibly his life, valueless as it was. The vital thing was that Diane Miller would still be alive. Or he could have undertaken less draconian measures and simply found a way to inform her of the peril she faced by suggesting she not attend the fundraiser. Even if she still insisted on doing so, he could have instructed her to make sure she surrounded herself with other people while keeping well out of Jason's sphere. That solution would indeed have worked, would have secured her continuing survival. Then Spinelli and Jason would have been gone and she would have been safe. Spinelli would have been sure to ensure the continuance of her ongoing security by keeping a subtle guard over Jason.

An hour after the first newscast all the local stations had reverted to their regular late night programming fare of talk shows and movies. Spinelli half lay and half sat on the sofa his mind a blank. He possessed no more energy and he couldn't seem to devise any plan of action for he had no future… After this latest death-"Murder!"-he hissed to himself in self abomination, there was no salvation left to be sought. His hands were as thickly coated in invisible and irredeemable blood stains as ever were Lady Macbeth's. Listless and full of a drowning ennui, he drifted ever closer to the abyss that marks the boundary between rationality and insanity. The penthouse was no longer empty, its darkened dusty environs were crowded with the shades of those who accused him.

Wraithlike, Georgie and Maxie drifted around the room one with bloodied eyes and a cord wrapped around her neck while the other was pale and staring with a tiny hand convulsively rubbing at her chest. Lulu and Diane also both visited with limbs twisted at unnatural angles and their heads crushed. Sam came, her face still lovely but her torso a torn, gaping and bloodied thing.

The apparitions of the Jones sisters sat next to him on the couch, leaned into him and sighed, their chill breath frosting his cheek and causing his heart to skip beats. Sam bent over the back of the sofa ruffling his hair and murmuring, "Spinelli," in a toneless whisper that only his mind apprehended for there were no sound waves to vibrate his eardrum. Diane and Lulu occupied the vacant armchairs. The lawyer's head dangled abnormally making Spinelli queasy to see it. Lulu smiled at him from the other chair, her body an awkward shifting kaleidoscope of loosely reassembled parts haphazardly held together by her ghostly flesh.

The door of the penthouse opened unceremoniously and his spectral visitors instantaneously fled, retreating silently as they were absorbed fully by the secretive blackness of the room's many corners. "Spinelli," Jason had returned.

Thirty seconds before his roommate's arrival Spinelli would have questioned his ability to ever move again, to be able to use his neurons to stimulate his muscles so that he might walk or talk or do even the most minor of physical acts. He thought he and the couch might become a single fused entity as he was haunted unto death by those who had earned the right to persecute him eternally. Yet, the minute his name left Jason's lips he was electrified into uncoordinated motion. He leapt up from the sofa and retreated until his back was against the fireplace. He stood facing his newly declared nemesis, his eyes wide with horror and fear, his heart racing agitatedly within his chest.

"Spinelli," Jason was walking toward him, he had flipped on the light switch by the door and his eyes and face radiated a concern that the hacker instinctively mistrusted. "What's wrong?"

Spinelli raised a trembling hand, palm outward, clearly trying to forestall his roommate's forward motion. "S..t..op, c..om..e no n…ear..er," his lips were numb and his teeth chattered.

Jason, seeing how truly distressed Spinelli was, did stop several feet away from him. He stood next to the couch and spoke quietly and gently, trying to appease the younger man with his words, his tone, his non-threatening mannerisms. "It's okay, you're safe. Whatever scared you is gone now. I'm here and…"

He never got to finish because Spinelli had once again found his voice and the words came tumbling out vehement and accusatory. "Nay, for what Stone Cold attempts to promise is predicated upon a fallacy. How can he be the one to protect and reassure when he is the very agent of destruction, a conscienceless minion of the grim reaper himself!"

Jason stared at Spinelli with a puzzled stare, he didn't understand what he was saying. "Of course I would protect you, Spinelli, I would give my life to keep you safe." He said it with quiet assurance, it was a non-debatable assertion and they both knew it for the truth.

"Indeed you would but it is even more likely that you would kill to keep me from a fictional danger, from a perceived threat which exists only within the tangles of your fevered mind. Such a tainted deed is one you performed this very night."

Spinelli was done tiptoeing around Jason's sensibilities. He still wasn't ready to turn him into the police that was more than he could contemplate-locking up this man who had once been everything to him. Yet, he had nothing else to lose by accusing Jason. If he managed to make him angry enough perhaps he would snap and commit his last murder. Killing his tormented grasshopper would perform the double kindness of releasing Spinelli from the tiresome bonds of mortality while keeping everyone else in the city safe as well. After all, if there were no Jackal to jealousy guard there would be no further crazed need to indiscriminately murder on his behalf.

Jason just stared at him in dumbfounded perplexity. "What are you talking about, Spinelli?" Now there was a warning edge to his voice, a familiar tone that hinted at Jason's waning patience.

"You would feign ignorance?" Spinelli spat out his full fury finally aroused, "Perhaps tonight's craven deed is so unimportant when measured against the uncountable such acts committed by Stone Cold that it has already been erased from his memory." He stopped to catch his breath, his chest heaving as he glared at the other man. "How could you do it, Stone Cold, how could you?" Now he was pleading, begging for some explanation that would alleviate his all consuming guilt and give him some small consolation. "We were to leave tomo…no, tis today now and all would have been well. I would have been yours as was your stated desire and the only recompense I sought was the cessation of death, of violence. Could you not have controlled yourself for one brief evening's sojourn?"

"Controlled myself? Spinelli…" Jason raised his hands palms up in a universal gesture of incomprehension. "What is it that you think I did?"

Spinelli closed his eyes in despair, clenching his fists he rubbed them into his eye sockets as though he could somehow through that external action eradicate all the ugly, terrifying pictures and visions swirling through his reeling mind. He saw Sam lying on the filthy ground bleeding out and Maxie clutching her chest as her heart spasmed in pain, reneging on its promise of delivering life to her oxygen deprived system. Lulu screaming in terror as she uselessly clutched at the railings of the elevator car while it plummeted down the shaft. Georgie her eyes wide in shock, clawing at the cord around her neck, choking and fighting to breathe, to live. The most searing image was the one of Diane trying to process the insupportable fact that a millisecond ago she had been standing on the Metro Court terrace and was now hurtling through open air with nothing to catch or sustain her, the wind whistling around her mercilessly as her body attained terminal velocity.

"Spinelli!" His voice was panicked. Jason had moved next to him, he fought against the younger man's resistance as he tried to pull his punishing fists away from his eyes. "Stop it!" He commanded him frantically, "You'll hurt yourself!" With a wrench that made him wince at the brutal strength he was forced to employ he pulled Spinelli's hands down and pinned them against his side.

Spinelli was panting but he stood passively not attempting to fight Jason's iron grip in any way. He rolled his head back and forth against the stone surrounding the fireplace as tears rolled unchecked down his cheeks. "Pain is everywhere, everywhere, it is in my brain, my heart, my soul why should my body not share in such abundant bounty?"

"You're not making any sense, Spinelli. What is that you think I did to cause you to act this way?" Jason was attempting to be calm and rational but it was a battle for him to assume that mask in the face of such heartbreaking anguish emanating from his roommate.

Spinelli stopped twisting his head; he focused his bloodshot eyes on Jason's face, his own tearstained face eerily blank as though his life force was inexorably ebbing from him. "The game is up, Stone Cold," he said wearily, "I refer to the incident tonight wherein the Brusque Lady of Justice met her undue demise at your wretched hands."

Jason relaxed his harsh hold on Spinelli's arms as he looked at him in stupefaction, "That's what this is about?" He asked incredulously. "You think I killed Diane?"

"You deny it then?" Spinelli responded dully, he supposed he wasn't surprised that his mentor didn't want to incriminate himself. Jason had decades of experience fencing with much more facile interrogators than himself and had never made any admissions of guilt.

"Yeah," Jason said quietly, "I didn't kill Diane." He let his statement stand on its own merits without embellishment.

The silence was a living entity, a suffocating third party in the penthouse, stretched and unyielding it eddied and flowed around them as they locked gazes, the unblinking blue steadfastly boring into the doubting green. "Just yesterday, the lady lawyer slapped you, a humiliating attack which infuriated and enraged you. Then tonight she is dead, dropping from a great height. Coincidentally this macabre happenstance transpired during an event at which you were both in attendance. That circumstantial association combined with apriori knowledge about Stone Cold's activities led the Jackal to the logical conclusion that his Master must indeed be the culpable party." He spoke steadily, never removing his own eyes from Jason's eyes, wanting to gauge his reactions to see if he could separate falsehood from probity.

Jason followed every word Spinelli said, he watched intently as he spoke almost as though he were lip reading in addition to listening. He waited a moment to be sure the hacker had finished speaking for the time being before replying. "It wasn't me, Spinelli. I was angry with Diane, I didn't like her coming over here on the sly to speak against me and when she slapped me that was the end of any connection between us-personal or legal. Yet, I believed everything you said about leaving Port Charles, about not wanting anything to do with Diane and not wanting to go to the fundraiser with her." His eyes narrowed and it was his turn to look searchingly into Spinelli's eyes, seeking confirmation of what he wanted to believe that Spinelli had been sincere in his protestations about needing and requiring nothing more than Jason's permanent companionship. "Did you really mean it?"

Spinelli blushed but his gaze didn't waver, he didn't know how the shoe had so abruptly shifted to the other foot but he was relieved that he could answer Jason with unadulterated honesty. "Assuredly, Stone Cold, the Jackal pledged himself completely to his Master, there was nothing untoward or mendacious in his words." He watched Jason's face carefully and saw that he was believed as the older man dropped his restraining hold on Spinelli's arms. Jason raised his right hand and ran it over his face in a characteristic gesture of releasing pent up emotion. "You did not kill the litigious one then?" Spinelli inquired cautiously, not wanting there to be any renewal of the tension between the two of them.

Jason shook his head somberly, his eyes were unfocused and it was clear he was reliving the incident, "It was an accident, those stupid heels of her's…We were out on the terrace-Carly, Max, Jax, Alexis, me, and Diane of course. It wasn't planned, I was just out there to get some air, was planning to say goodnight to Carly and come home soon. Diane was standing next to the edge of the terrace, her purse resting on the balustrade. She had been drinking quite a bit but I don't think she was drunk…just argumentative. You know the way she gets…got…" He looked at Spinelli the ghost of a reminiscent smile curving his lips. His roommate nodded slightly, fearful that any further comment or movement would disrupt the narrative flow.

"Anyway, she and Alexis were bickering over something, I don't know what, I wasn't listening. Then there was a scream-Alexis was shouting out her name, 'Diane' and she was falling, already falling by the time I turned around." He closed his eyes and Spinelli for a brief moment saw with a pang that he was the Jason of old. He was once again the knight in rusty armor who tried to walk a perilous tightrope of circumscribed violence as he attempted to keep it from touching the innocents in his life and yet, somehow always miserably failed in attaining his goal. His heart swelled with empathy for the pain his friend was enduring, he comprehended it well.

"I tried," now his brilliant gaze was again directly focused on Spinelli as Jason looked to see if he was believed. He seemed reassured by what he read in his roommate's expression. "Alexis did, Max did, we all ran and reached but there was nothing to grab but air." His voice was bitter. "It was the damn purse and those shoes, those fucking shoes. According to Alexis, she knocked her purse over the edge of the balcony and as she was reaching for it the heel of her shoe got entangled in the hem of her dress. It snapped off which shifted her balance enough so that in the position she was in, leaning out over the railing, she toppled over and by the time we realized what was happening it was too late to save her."

Spinelli was stunned, he believed Jason, he absolutely did. Diane hadn't died because Jason had killed her but because of a rank betrayal by her beloved fashion icons, her shoes. He felt a fierce wave of exultation wash over him for a brief moment followed almost immediately by an abiding and wretched shame. What had he come to that he felt joy upon hearing that someone-no, not a mere someone-a dear friend he cared for and who had cared for him, hadn't died by Jason Morgan's hand? However it came about, Diane Miller was dead and her death as the poets said diminished them all.

Another sudden thought blazed across his unsettled mind after his self chastisement. 'If Stone Cold wasn't culpable in the Brusque Lady of Justice's demise, perhaps he was equally as innocent in the other circum…no, the Jackal will speak plainly, deaths. Mayhap it is the Jackal's mind which is becoming unhinged in the face of so much unspeakable tragedy…'

He couldn't do this anymore, he simply couldn't. He thought he could, thought he could exist without knowing positively one way or the other. Yet, now he understood, that decision, that non-resolution was due solely to the fact that he actually thought Jason had done it. He hadn't wanted to know the truth, couldn't bear a confirmation, for then how would he exist, how would he go through life with such an unbearable load upon his shoulders?

"Spinelli?" Jason was staring at the silent hacker with concern in his eyes. "You okay?" He stepped closer and placed his hands on either side of his face. "Look at me," he demanded, determined that the boy not be allowed to block him out. That wasn't an option, he was his-body, mind and soul.

"Jason," the voice was quiet, hesitant but there was hard steel underlying it. "The Jackal…I believe that you didn't have anything to do with what occurred this evening but…" He was fighting to get the words out but no matter how difficult the task he would complete it. The time had come to ask, to remove all doubt. "The others-Maxie, Sam, Lulu…Georgie…did you…kill them?" It was done, whatever would come of it, he had spoken, he had finally faced up to it.

Reviews are always appreciated


	5. Sacrificial Lamb

A/N: I have no rights over the characters of General Hospital

Okay, here it folks, the part where the other aspect of the M rating comes into play. Up until now I felt it applied because of tone, I didn't think it was an appropriate story to be read by someone too young. Now, however, we are heading into some slightly more physical interactions between Jason and Spinelli. I personally don't think it is terribly risqué but it is sexual and people have different thresholds for that topic and its depiction. So, this is your warning, read on from here at your own discretion. Thanks for taking this rather soul wrenching journey with me.

Sacrificial Lamb

Jason didn't alter his position, his hands still encased the hacker's cheeks while his warm breath wafted across Spinelli's face. "Georgie,' a strange smile twisted his lips, "You figured out Georgie? That's impressive, but then again I guess I should have known with that brain of yours that it was only a matter of time."

Spinelli's heart rate quickened to an unbearable pitch making him feel as though his blood vessels would explode from the increase in pressure. "So," his voice was little more than a strangled whisper, "Stone Cold does not deny the commission of these heinous acts?"

Jason cocked his head at an angle, his expression was quizzical as he looked at Spinelli. "Deny it, no, I don't deny it. Why would I? I had to do it, to protect you, to keep you safe."

"Safe from what, pray tell me?" Spinelli knew it probably wasn't wise to aggravate Jason by challenging him but he was beyond caring. "How were these woman a danger to me-Gentle Georgie, Maximista, Fair Lulu and Samantha?"

Jason eye's narrowed and he snorted in disgust at the hacker's question. He pulled his hands away from Spinelli's face and stepped away from him. "Georgie!" He proclaimed hotly, "She was the worst, I should never have told you my suspicions about her feelings for you. The minute I did you reacted exactly as she wanted you to, you ran to find her to be with her, to give up everything for her. She would have trapped you in a life that you weren't ready for. By now you probably would be married to her, even have kids and then where would I fit in?"

"Stone Cold," Spinelli said helplessly, he was appalled. "You killed Faithful Georgie because of a purely potential outcome, because you feared the impossible that you would lose the allegiance, the affection of your forever faithful grasshopper?" The unmitigated guilt was a black cancerous sore embedded into what was left of his soul.

"She would have taken you away from me, Spinelli. I saw it in your eyes when I told you. I couldn't bear it. So, I decided to go find you, to tell you I was mistaken. I knew if I could reach you before you got to Georgie that I could convince you not to talk to her because you would believe me. You always believe that people don't want you and you are always so wrong…"

Jason wasn't angry or defiant any longer. His eyes were gentle as he once again reached out his hand to cup the back of the younger man's head pulling him insistently toward him. Spinelli stumbled a little as he found himself encircled by Jason's arms. Now they were chest to chest, he was engulfed by Jason's cologne and radiant heat while his body was a solid bulwark against which he rested. "Spinelli," the word was throaty, filled with longing as Jason crushed the hacker to him, stroking his hair. His face was pressed into Jason's torso while his chin rested on the crown of Spinelli's head. .

Jason continued speaking, describing what had happened that night. His voice vibrated down from the top of Spinelli's head to the soles of his feet while he clutched at the dark blue dress shirt his mentor was wearing, irrevocably staining his silk tie with his silent, shuddering tears. "Before I could find you, I saw her-Georgie-in the park on the stairs, well, you know…"

Indeed, Spinelli knew full well, it still haunted his dreams except now the last face that Georgie and thereby Spinelli as her id based surrogate would see was Jason's rather than Diego's. He suspected that Georgie would have preferred that it wasn't Diego who violated her tender trust but Spinelli knew the revelation was a much harsher burden for him to bear. He had previously thought that the worst thing possible was finding Georgie's crumpled, life and light deprived body on those cold unyielding stairs but he couldn't have been more wrong. Knowing that Jason had been the agent of her demise, understanding that she would still be alive if he-Spinelli-hadn't impulsively gone in search of her to declare his own burgeoning feelings of affection, of a nascent love was a much more intolerable discovery.

"Because of me, me, me…" He whispered the words into the fabric of Jason's shirt, his face crushed into the material as Jason's large hand tenderly continued in its rhythmic movements.

"I wasn't intending to do anything more than talk to her. I swear to you Spinelli." He tipped his roommate's head up and the shining sincerity radiating from his eyes was unmistakable. He gave a small shrug of his shoulders as his eyes turned suddenly cold. "That's when I saw it, laying on the ground a few feet away, it was a clothesline cord. I knew then it was my destiny, a sign." Spinelli inhaled sharply as he saw something spark deep down in Jason's pupils. A feral madness suddenly blazed up consuming Jason's face and twisting his appearance into something despicably alien. "I could kill her and everyone would think it was the Text Message killer. I would be safe and you would still be mine." The cunning in his expression as he looked down at Spinelli inviting praise for his quick thinking, his adept actions caused the hacker to feel violently ill.

The room spun around him and he clutched at Jason as he fought to stand upright. "Stone Cold," it was a useless protesting moan, a plea to the fates that he might never have been born so as to have neither caused nor known such misery.

They stood entwined between the fireplace and the couch, Jason practically holding Spinelli upright as he fought to control his mind and his weak betraying body. "That time after Georgie died was so special," Jason's voice was soft and reminiscent. "You leaned on me to help get you through your grief. Sam was gone and it was just you and me here. That was my favorite time but then there was Maxie." His tone altered, it was now pitiless and unforgiving.

"Maximista," Spinelli uttered her name as a hopeless prayer. He wished to beg for absolution but how could the world, the universe even, encompass enough forgiveness to wash Damian Spinelli's blackened soul clean?

"Yes," Jason stepped away from Spinelli and glared at him almost accusingly, his eyes a hard, glittering cobalt blue, his face livid except for two hectic spots of red on each cheek. "Maximista you called her as though she deserved a name like that when what she was really doing was using you. Hell, she even used her dead sister to insinuate herself into your life." It was as though Jason was entirely divorced from the role he had played in depriving Maxie of her beloved sister. "You see I would never know a word like insinuate without your influence." His entire demeanor underwent a radical alteration as Jason smiled fondly at Spinelli, once more moving close to him. He reached out to compassionately push the overhanging hair away from his forehead, leaning forward he gently brushed his lips against Spinelli's fevered brow. "She didn't deserve you, she would have broken your heart again and I didn't know if you would keep surviving that. I stopped her before she had the chance to ruin you." His voice was calm, reasonable as though he were explaining why he couldn't let Spinelli have a puppy or go to the movies on a school night.

"And Lulu," Spinelli prompted, desperately trying to get Jason to stop talking about Maxie. The ugly words Jason spoke with indifferent casualness and the cruel expression on his face repulsed him. Yet, he couldn't afford to be anything but numb for now, maybe forever. Besides, if he were honest with himself, he wanted to know the truth. He had belatedly ascertained that one of his last personality traits to atrophy was also one of his most compelling that of pure, human curiosity or maybe it was simply the drive to somehow quantify the impossible, to parse insanity.

"Lulu!" Jason's anger was clearly once more aroused. "You mourned with her, you turned to her in your need rather then to me!"

Spinelli was dismayed, had Lulu died merely because she was kind to him? "She was getting back together with Johnny," he protested as though there were logic to be found in such a wasteland of pure lunacy. "She was no threat to you, to us…" He amended hastily, recognizing that arguing with Jason might further inflame his mentor's ire.

"Lulu treated you badly from the first," Jason's face was stern and unforgiving. "She always came to you when she needed something and ignored you the rest of the time. I didn't trust her. She and Johnny broke up before, what was to stop her from leaning on you when it happened the next time? No," he shook his head as he affirmed his decision to himself, to Spinelli, to the world at large. "I wasn't going to risk it, she was too unpredictable."

Spinelli closed his eyes as though he might somehow manage to shut out the world, blank out what Jason and he, through his ignorance, had done. He dwelt miserably upon the profligate loss of so much young, promising, vivacious life, snuffed out because Jason was obsessed, jealous and just plain mad. Spinelli knew he could gouge his eyes out, perforate his eardrums and still it wouldn't be enough for it would only serve to forever seal him within the tormenting pictures occupying his mind. He would become a captive for perpetuity, languishing forever amidst all that haunting, faded loveliness. Then there would be two madmen orbiting one another until one of them eventually perished.

He rubbed irritably at his forehead, his head was pounding from all the distressing revelations but he welcomed the pain, felt it was his masochistic due. "Sam," the word escaped Spinelli's lips unbidden. She certainly deserved her turn in the macabre litany that was Jason's confession, his rationalization of the worse crime known to man, the taking of innocent lives.

"Sam," Jason's voice was quiet and uninflected but something in it caused Spinelli to look up into his eyes and what he saw there made him vaguely uneasy. "That was the night, wasn't it? The night you began to suspect me, what I had done…You left our bed to go out into to the dark." He reached out and grabbed the younger man by the shoulders, his fingers biting into the tender flesh deep enough to leave bruises. "You went to see where that bitch died, didn't you…didn't you?" His voice had risen, had become strident and now he was shaking Spinelli, the hapless hacker's head was lolling back and forth as terror swelled up within him. "Answer me!" It was an uncontrolled roar, the room was spinning and Spinelli saw spots across his vision as blackness began to overtake his consciousness.

Slowly Spinelli became aware that he was no longer standing. He was wrapped in Jason's arms, awkwardly sprawled across him on the sofa while his right foot dangled over the edge. He could feel the agitated rise and fall of Jason's chest as he rubbed his back and crooned at him, "I'm sorry, Spinelli, so sorry. I lost my temper and I shouldn't have. I would never hurt you, _never. _I love you and just want to keep you safe and with me always…" It was a strange parody of the other time Jason had comforted him over Sam's death but back then Spinelli didn't understand the irony implicit in his grief being assuaged by the very person responsible for it.

"Stone Cold," Spinelli muttered as he began to twist against the arms encasing him. Pushing against Jason's broad chest he managed to sit up next to him on the couch. Jason still had an arm wrapped around him unwilling to relinquish all contact with the younger man.

For several minutes they just sat in silence while they each struggled to regain their composure and to organize their thoughts. Finally, Jason spoke, "I know Sam wouldn't take you away from me that she was simply trying to get you back to your old self, back to working at the agency."

"So, then why did you…" Spinelli despised his inability to say the words 'murder' or 'kill'. Yet, how much worse than words was the deed itself?

Jason looked at him, his gaze holding a hint of weariness, maybe even self-recrimination though Spinelli couldn't be sure that wasn't just projection on his part. He sighed as he ran an unthinking finger along Spinelli's jaw tracing it and curving up to his ear, his touch delicate and light. "She was a danger junkie, Spinelli. She never thought, she just acted and that night her luck had run out. I could have saved her but then what about the next time? What about when one of her decisions managed to get you hurt or killed? No, if something happened to you, I couldn't bear it. So, I did what I had to…" His tone was regretful, the voice of a man driven to perform deplorable deeds by the poor choices and behaviors of others rather than by his own inclination.

"So, you pushed her," Spinelli stated the words baldly, at this point there was nothing to be gained by discretion.

Jason just nodded his head, saying nothing. He closed his eyes and leaned in toward Spinelli, his lips grazed against his roommate's cheek as he began to press barely perceptible kisses along the line from his ear to his lips. The feel of Jason's lips against his own sent an unexpected pulse of pure yearning through Spinelli's body. He was surprised and somewhat disconcerted that his mind and body could be in such discord. Jason's left hand rubbed against his cheek while his right cupped against the back of his head pulling him closer as he increased the intensity of the kiss. His tongue darted out insisting on entry and Spinelli's lips opened of their own volition. He was overwhelmed with indefinable feelings and wants, by the foreign tastes and sensations Jason's tongue induced within his mouth. Their mouths were fused together and Spinelli wrapped his arms around Jason's back clinging to him in his desperate search for affirmation, for some meaning to his stunted existence. A deep seated moan of need emanated from within him as mismatched waves of desire and shame coursed through him.

Jason reached around his back and capturing one of Spinelli's hands brought it down to his groin where he placed it over his pants letting the hacker fill his erection as it pulsed and throbbed beneath his palm. Breaking off the kiss, panting with lust he stared into Spinelli's eyes as he pressed their hands together on his crotch. "I want you Spinelli, all of you." The words were stark, his voice so choked with longing that he could barely enunciate them. "Tonight, will you stay with me tonight?"

Spinelli was shocked to find that he wanted a renewal of the kiss, that he only wanted to remove his hand from its current position long enough to unzip Jason's pants and release his penis so he could touch it, wrap his mouth around it, have it guided into his body so that he might banish the aching emptiness that filled him. Yet, some part of his lust glazed mind was still sentient enough to recognize an opportunity to use Jason's naked craving to elicit a response he required before embarking upon this twisted and tainted pathway.

"Stone Cold," he spoke hesitantly, for once words weren't his allies, didn't come easily. "The Jackal will concur… will agree to your request and all it implies…if you but grant him a single boon."

Jason stared at him for a moment, not speaking, his breathing once again slow and regular, his erection slightly lessened as he belatedly understood that Spinelli was using his body as a bargaining chip. "What is it?" He asked without inflection.

"Simply this," Spinelli had found his voice again. "The Jackal…I will be with you tonight, each and every night if we but leave Port Charles tomorrow never to return. This place," he extracted his hand from Jason's lap and gestured around the living room, "It's no longer my home, it is too filled with unhappy memories, with darkness. We need a fresh start where no one knows us, where we can be solely unto one another without outside commentary or condemnation. Someplace," he sighed with heartfelt longing, "Someplace where the sun continually shines and shadows are banished." He stopped speaking, now he could only await Jason's response.

"That's it?" Jason was looking at him in puzzlement as though searching for some hidden meaning, some trap that he would stumble into if he wasn't wary.

"Indeed that is it with the small additional request that the Jackal would ask his Master to have faith and trust in his grasshopper's unswerving loyalty and dedication. So, that he perhaps would have no further need to be threatened by others, that the Jackal will always be by his side without abatement."

"What about love?" Jason's voice was sadly quiet as he asked the question, his eyes penetrating as he searched Spinelli's face. "Do you love me, Spinelli?"

Spinelli was relieved, this was a test he could pass. "Yes, Stone Cold, I love you." He knew better than to embellish the statement.

A fiercely joyful smile lit up Jason's features as he grabbed both of Spinelli's hands and kissed each palm. "Then it's settled, we leave tomorrow!"

"Never to return," Spinelli gently prompted him for the single concession he was determined to have.

"If that's what you want," Jason promised easily with a careless shrug. "All I care about is having you entirely to myself. I don't care where. Now," his eyes were heavy lidded, Spinelli's hands still grasped within his, "Meet me upstairs, in my room. I'll be up after taking care of things down here."

It was a command and Spinelli recognized it as such. He stood up from the couch and was just starting to head for the stairs when Jason's arms wrapped around him pulling him back into his body warmth and the probing shaft of his reinvigorated erection. Spinelli felt an answering throb in his own groin. He thought with an almost manic relief, 'How fortunate it is that Jackal's body appears happy to comply with Stone Cold's amorous demands upon it.' He had worried about his ability to fulfill the inevitable physical aspect of his sin sealed bargain and it was some small comfort to know that this central facet to their newly defined relationship seemingly would not go amiss.

"I forgot to tell you," Jason's warm breath blew into Spinelli's ear raising shivers as he whispered, "Johnny Zacchara was asking after you tonight, before Diane's accident. He asked you to call him, to get together at Jake's and talk."

The words were entirely innocuous and totally deadly. Spinelli didn't move, he didn't twitch a single muscle as he made sure he was composed enough to answer the way he needed to in order to ensure Johnny's survival. His voice was cold and indifferent, "The Jackal shall not be contacting the Mob Prince. He is not interested in maintaining any associations in Port Charles and since we leave tomorrow any plan for a future meeting is a moot point anyway."

Jason's arms slackened, bending his head down his teeth nipped lightly at the juncture where the hacker's neck and shoulder met. "Okay, if that is how you want it to be" he said huskily as he ground himself into Spinelli's ass, his hand slipping down to rub over the bulge in his lover's jeans. "I'll be with you in a minute."

Spinelli walked up the stairs in a disoriented haze. He stopped outside Jason's room, his hand resting on the door handle as he looked down the hall to the former haven represented by his regrettably pink room. After tonight, he knew there would be nowhere left for him to hide, every part of himself would be on continuous display for Jason's covetous and possessive gaze.

Slowly he stepped into the sterile room dressed in neutral grays and blacks. There was only one personal possession visible-a picture on the bureau. Robotically Spinelli walked over and picking it up gazed at it in wonderment. It was a photograph of him. He was down at the docks, the wind pushing his hair back from his face as he stared at the camera with a wistful smile, his eyes matching the sea in their green clarity. Spinelli had no memory of the day, of the picture being taken or how Jason had acquired it. Still, he was full of a yearning sadness as he recognized the loss of the boy frozen forever in his untrammeled innocence and hope. Gently he replaced the frame face down on the bureau. That version of Spinelli was dead, all that was left of him was a walking husk bearing only a superficial resemblance to the young, naïve hacker who once believed that goodness and love perpetually triumphed over cruelty and hate.

With a heavy sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed awaiting Jason's arrival. His mind was a jumble of disconnected thoughts as he pondered the nature of his current life and the stultifying future he faced. He finally understood that love comes in many guises, some sweet and mellow, some sharp and poisonous. He knew he was destined to lie down in a bed of thorns and someday when he could battle no more, he would let them pierce his heart and his life blood would stain the very bower of love and lust that Jason would create for him. Until that inevitable moment, he would stay entrapped within the twisted thing his existence had become, love and despair commingling on his every breath…

A/N: Reviews are always appreciated


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